Linzi Brechin

BSc Food and Consumer Sciences, 2012

Tell me more about your job and what it involves?

I'm the Assistant Editor of the Co-op Food Magazine. It’s about writing or commissioning all of the recipes for each magazine. That’s the bulk of my job. Then there’s going out to food photoshoots, making sure that everything is shot in the right way, and that we’re not using the wrong ingredients.

On top of that, there’s the basic day-to-day management of the magazine and planning ahead, attending press events and getting new ideas for things like Christmas and Halloween, which we start working on in the summer.

So you REALLY have to plan ahead?

On my first week in the job in June or July we went up to the Co-op’s head office in Manchester to look at their Christmas products and we had a turkey dinner at 10.30am!

We work at least three or four months in advance.

It must be strange to be dealing with things like Halloween and Christmas at the height of the summer?

It is! I’m used to it though, as I previously did it for Asda magazine.

It can be quite challenging if it’s 30 degrees and you’re popping a turkey in the oven for a few hours. But it’s good fun! It keeps you on your toes.

How did you end up in your current job?

It’s a bit bizarre really! I studied Food and Consumer Sciences at Abertay and, during my third year, we were offered a placement.

I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do, but I spoke to my tutors about food writing and they put me in touch with a person called Gregor who had done the same course as me eight years previously.

He was working in London for a company that produced the Asda magazine. I did a two-month placement with them and the week before I graduated, they offered me a job. 

It sounds like your time at Abertay was instrumental in helping you get to where you are now?

100%.

It’s funny because I’m still very good friends with Gregor and he got his job in the same way, through another person doing the course.

Now there’s a fourth girl in the chain who’s just started at Asda doing my old job!

What’s your lasting impression of Abertay?

I loved it. It was very down to earth and everyone was really chilled.

It was serious of course - you had to get the work done – but you were always coached rather than pressured into doing things.

What advice do you have for our current students?

Grab any opportunity you can, whether it be a placement or work experience or volunteering for things. That really, really helps.