Executivev Chef

Position: Executive Chef

Reports to : Mark Serice

Summary:

• Elevate culinary to drive new business through culinary leadership and Culinology expertise. Leads in the culinary development of products and applications based on innovation and marketplace insights for commercialization purposes. Curate the development of differentiating food products that support our Customers’ success while exemplifying Griffith Foods’ purpose driven strategy and valued behaviors. Be a role model to the Company Culture by living the Company Values and strive each day to explore, create, and develop new food product concepts to support our Customers’ brands success in the marketplace while strengthening our communities.
• Management and supervision of multiple Culinary roles within the team, driving collaboration and communication while ensuring KPI’s are achieved or exceeded.
• Responsible for goal setting and maintaining accountability with direct reports through timely feedback along with mid-year, and end of year reviews.
• Support the Director role with clear communication of team objectives and corresponding plans to achieve them.
• Adherence to budget and management of expenses
• Ability to conduct training exercises based on company-based programs as well as day to day opportunities.
• Culinary Account Management to identify and execute business opportunities through collaboration with key teams and other supplier partners.
• Active leadership in customer account planning through the lens of Culinary
• Leveraging relationships to drive new acquisition
• Collaboration with cross functional team members to drive opportunities across various other segments.
• Culinary Consultation: Use culinary techniques in conjunction with innovation technologies in flavor and texture to plan, guide, and collaborate with R&D Scientists in development of concepts and products (example: Gold standard prototype development, plate presentation, product preparation, ingredient selection, paper concept development) based on daily requests and/or Account initiatives.
• Customer Focus: Chef will serve as the Culinary point of connection with an intimate knowledge of customer product offerings, capabilities, and processes. Responsibilities rely heavily on trust and ability to build strong relationships with key customer contacts.
• Cultivate a Culinary Ecosystem: Strengthen Griffith Foods’ position and deliver value in collaboration with food and innovation partners to strengthen Griffith Foods’ position and deliver value. Develops and maintains strategic relationships with new and existing accounts.
• Keeps up to date on culinary skills and maintains memberships to key culinary organizations such as Guild, WACS, RCA and/or ACF. Shares feedback with the North American Kitchen, direct supervisor, and GCC to share best practices.
• CRM platform: Responsible for the use of culinary techniques and expertise to plan, lead and execute culinary aspects of business opportunities and update CRM platform.
• Creative Ideation Leadership: Working as part of a cross-functional team the chef will lead the ideation, development, coordination, and execution of product-based presentations that showcase culinary innovation and business solutions.
• Innovation: Partner with the Innovation team to enable the application and commercialization of new technologies as part of the product development process.
• Health and Nutrition Champion: leads the creative development of delicious new products in the H&N category leveraging the latest nutritional health trends or other insights.
• Culinary Trends: Collaborate with Marketing and Consumer Insights teams to identify, apply, and communicate culinary trends to daily business activities or initiatives. Ability to translate marketing and consumer insights information into easily digestible communication (culinary demo videos, presentations, etc.) targeted towards Protein segment customers.
• Global Culinary Support: Leads targeted company culinary-based activities which require coordination with chefs from other Griffith business units and/or customer chefs. Activities may include training, cuisine presentations, product demonstrations, etc.
• Internal Culinary Events: Responsible for organizing & executing targeted industry/company culinary luncheons/charity/Executive requested activities including development of menu, alignment of resources (internal & external), and demonstration of culinary savvy and excellence in the food prepared and offered.

Knowledge and Experience:

• Minimum (2) year AOS degree of Culinary Arts, Food Science, Gastronomy, Gastronomy Technician, Diploma in Foods Engineering CECADET/UNAM from an accredited institution or graduated from a 3-year cooking apprenticeship.
• Fully bilingual.
• Minimum of 3 years in a Culinary Management type role with multiple direct reports.
• Minimum 5 years’ professional experience in a commercial kitchen of a food service operation and/or industrial organization specializing in the development of new concepts and menu items for commercial production. This can also include experience with QSR, Other Food Service, Protein Processors, Other Food Processors or Snacks.
• Culinology experience in tandem with commercialization, processing, and food science knowledge is preferred.
• Experience utilizing flavors, texturizers, and specialty ingredients is preferred.
• Knowledge of Health and Nutrition principles and the use of those in new product development is preferred.