Co-op young business leaders
Co-op Young Business Leaders is an annual work placement that takes place at Co-op with students from the Business B-Tech at Co-op Connell Academy in Manchester. A group of students aged 17 and 18 years old embark on a 12-week programme and are given a real-life project to work on.
In 2025 students were asked to develop an Own Brand product that was new to the market and something that Co-op did not already sell in Own Brand. They create the product, develop the branding and marketing and commerciality of the product.
Their final presentation is to the Ops Board where they present their product idea and this year the Ops Board were so impressed that they challenged the Own Brand Team to launch the products.
Two of the ideas were an Acai Bowl and a Protein Over-night Oats – both based upon trends the students had seen on social media and in OOH establishments. The resulting product that is going to land is a combination of the two ideas and we will launch an Acai & Kefir Overnight Oats product in FTG space in June 2026.
