Title: Senior Culinary Manager
Req ID: 8770
City, State: Westfield, WI
Reports to: Director of R&D
Classification: Exempt
Work Arrangement: Hybrid, 60% on-site
JOB DESCRIPTION:Summary: The Senior Culinary Manager is responsible for shaping culinary strategy and supporting various business areas by creating, promoting, and developing products and applications for all market segments. This position also involves developing key relationships within our customers' culinary groups and leveraging the expertise of key supply partner culinary and marketing teams.
Essential Functions: - Lead the Culinary Team: Develop long-term department strategy and goals that align with company initiatives and outline appropriate team resources to ensure success. Lead the team to deliver business-building ideas. Support strategic planning from a culinary perspective. Develop and implement best practices for product, recipe, and content development that drive results. Responsible for ongoing coaching, development, and management of direct reports to ensure staff development and career progression.
- Drive Innovation: Lead innovation efforts tailored to each business segment, communicating with appropriate stakeholders and presenting innovative products and meaningful applications that align with corporate initiatives. Partner with the Marketing team to support innovations with trends data.
- Collaborate with Suppliers: Engage with key suppliers to create new concepts that exceed customer expectations. Leverage supplier resources to speed concept and sample development.
- Provide Best-in-Class Culinary Resources: Help Brakebush become the culinary vendor partner of choice. Collaborate with the Sales and Marketing teams to lead strategic customer initiatives, offering creative culinary solutions that deliver with full portfolio representation. Curate and widely share food and flavor trends. Transform insights into actionable ideas by developing trend-based prototypes for both internal and external teams. Share culinary insights with our Sales team, including best practices for incorporating culinary knowledge, skills and passion into sales presentations. Teach the team to design and build innovative menu strategies using profitable, on-trend concepts.
- Support Business Needs: Ensure the successful support of internal and external customer requests, including sample development, visits, presentations, marketing collateral, and dining needs. Support sales meetings, national trade shows, and local/distributor food shows. Coordinate and create product applications and recipes for photo shoots, newsletters, and publications, and help create content for social media platforms.
Required Qualifications: - Degree in Culinary Arts, Culinology, or related field and 15 years of progressive professional experience in commercial kitchens, food operations, food processing, or industrial food organizations, including at least 2 years of management experience overseeing direct-report team member(s)
- Thorough understanding of back-of-house restaurant operations with extensive experience collaborating with Culinary professionals to provide menu analyses and finished applications
- Strong problem-solving skills on complex projects when dealing with limited or ambiguous details or information
- Ability to appropriately prioritize multiple projects simultaneously, while meeting established deadlines
- Demonstrated ability to communicate, collaborate, and manage internal relationships with all levels of the organization
- Excellent presentation skills and proficiency speaking in front of groups including senior leaders
- Strong organizational skills and communication skills
- Competent in Microsoft Office software
Preferred Qualifications: - BA or BS in Food Science, Culinology, Culinary Arts, or related area
- In-depth knowledge of methods and equipment used in value-added poultry processing
- Sales experience
Supervisory Responsibility: This position has oversight for any Culinary team positions at a corporate level, including but not limited to culinologists, applications chefs, and interns.
Work Environment: Working conditions will vary as the job requires that the person work in office, plant, and kitchen environments. Will be exposed to temperatures from warm to extreme cold, wet conditions, slippery floors, noise, etc. *Minimum 60% of scheduled time spent onsite in Westfield, at our company manufacturing facilities, or traveling to customer engagements.
Physical Demands: Position will include extensive standing at times, sitting, lifting, wearing factory required equipment while working in production, walking, visual, responding quickly to sounds and driving.
Position Type: This position will work during 1st shift. Occasionally, additional time will be required working during 2nd and 3rd shifts.
Travel: Travel up to 50%, including customer site visits, Brakebush plants, co-packers, and suppliers.
Other Duties: Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time with or without notice.
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