“Since I was young, I was always baking or cooking with my parents,” recalls the 20-year-old from Shropshire. “My father and I used to always make bread which I think sparked the initial interest in baking and the science behind how the ingredients determine the final finished product.”

That curiosity followed Zoe through school, where she chose Food Technology at GCSE and enjoyed experimenting with recipes for family and friends. Zoe didn’t begin her post-school journey at Reaseheath. She first studied professional cookery at another college, aiming for a career in hospitality, before realising she wanted to understand the science behind food.

“I actually started at a different college studying professional cookery because I wanted to work in hospitality,” she explains. “But I later chose to transfer to Reaseheath, where they offered a more scientific course on food manufacturing and technology. Their food centre is BRCGS AA+ accredited, which is the highest standard achievable in the food industry, and I knew that’s where I wanted to be.”

From her first visit to the Nantwich-based campus, Zoe knew she’d made the right choice. “Wow! The change from a kitchen environment to an industrial one was very different, but it opened up so many opportunities to learn how food products are made on a large scale,” she says.

She quickly found her rhythm in Reaseheath’s processing halls, creating everything from ice cream and milkshakes to butter, cakes, biscuits and bread.

“I have a favourite memory of scooping butter out of the churn with my classmates and putting it into large tubs that we then could use to make biscuits or bakery products later in the week – going full circle from making the butter from scratch to using it to make a different finished product.”

Zoe’s creativity shone in a group project where students developed and marketed their own recipe boxes.

“It was so much fun to develop the recipes that would be put into the box as well as creating the recipe sheets and conducting market research into consumer perceptions and their preferences.”

Zoe also took part in Reaseheath’s Farm to Fork initiative. “We taught children from surrounding schools about the food supply chain and highlighted the importance of linking the agricultural side of food production to food manufacture,” she recalls. “We also had a chef come in to help us teach children how to make a Greek fish dish which they then got to taste.”

The encouragement she found at Reaseheath, both from tutors and classmates, helped her grow in confidence. “The course tutors were so supportive and helpful with feedback on assignments,” Zoe says. “On a more personal scale the group of people on the course helped me to greatly improve my communication skills and confidence – when I joined the college I was quite quiet.”

With support from tutors Mike Bennett and Jess Davies, Zoe applied for the EDEN (European Dairy Educational Network) Dairy Technology Apprenticeship, where she could combine study with industry experience at Müller.

“The transition from college to EDEN was very exciting,” she says. “I was based at the chocolate desserts site in Shropshire. The facilities at the college and the modules we were taught were beneficial for preparing me for industry as it was very similar but on a smaller scale.