R&D Manager - Commercialization - Flora Food Group
Hackensack, NJ
About the Job
About Flora Food Group
We offer consumers a compelling choice in four growing categories: butters and spreads, creams, liquids and cheeses. We hold leadership positions in many of the 100 countries we operate in, with iconic brands including Flora, Becel+ProActiv, Blue Band, Country Crock, I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, Rama, and Violife, together with our local brands and Professional business.
Global branded food champion Flora Food Group, offers the next generation of delicious, natural, nutritious food. Our products are more affordable and more sustainable than their dairy equivalents.
Hybrid - 2-3x a week in the office with shuttle service for NYC-based employees
Compensation: Base salary $125K to $140K based on experience, expertise, and other legitimate, non-discriminatory factors. The position includes annual bonus opportunities and other competitive health and welfare benefits.
This role is for an R&D leader to take our industry-leading products, technologies, and know-how and to help them reach their potential in these alternate channels. Within a profitable industry, Flora Food Group is focused on a long-term strategy: driving growth through innovation. With a fresh leadership team, we have defined a different agenda, underpinned by bold innovation. In the retail channel in North America, Flora Food Group is the undisputed leader in dairy-free, plant-based butter, cheeses, and creams. With large, category-leading brands like Country Crock, I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, and Becel, Flora Food Group is driving innovation and growth in retail customers all over North America. However, retail only presents a part of the growth ambition of Flora Food Group. There are huge opportunities for our products in other channels such as food service, industrial, and private label that we have only begun to scratch the surface.
Responsibilities
- The person in this role will work closely with Flora Food Group Customer Sales, Marketing, Supply Chain, and Global R&D Product Design teams to:
- Develop customer and consumer insights to guide innovation growth program.
- identify potential growth opportunities and strategies by channel
- Evaluate Flora Food Group's product portfolio for the best possible product fit for each opportunity
- Initiate development briefs for new product solutions when appropriate
- Actively work with our field sales teams to demonstrate the benefits of Flora Food Group product solutions and to close sales
- Work collaboratively to develop strategic partnerships with key customers
- Serve as Technical Project Leader on projects involving rollout of existing technologies.
- Lead a small team of R&D Project leaders and technologists.
- Coordinate product and packaging development with the global R&D channel growth team as well as the global product and pack design team.
- Maintain and build a strong network of industrial and food service contacts.
In this role, you will inject passion and bring strong initiative to make a hugely positive impact to the way R&D delivers and innovates on both short and long-term business goals for growth in these channels. You will be encouraged to bring new insights, approaches and innovative technologies to the business to further strengthen Flora Food Group R&D team.
Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Food Science or Engineering with a passion for food.
- 10+ years of experience in Food Product Development R&D with considerable experience leading both R&D and cross-functional teams, experience in FMCG is essential.
- Technical experience and know-how in plant-based food technologies such as vegetable fats and oils, proteins, emulsification, and water structuring are a plus.
- Excellent communication skills including the ability to effectively communicate technology to both internal stakeholders and team members and external customers.
- Significant experience working in the food service and industrial (business to business) channels.
- Demonstrable skill in managing product innovation from ideas to launch including the identification, development and delivery of impactful business and consumer optimized product innovations.
- Experience in overseeing products in market, maintaining and growing existing base business, as well as driving productivity and cost
What's next
If this position sounds interesting, please hit the apply button now!
#LI-Hybrid
We understand your resume might not be up to date and recommend that you apply with what you have or your LinkedIn Profile. Flora Food Group is dedicated to building an inclusive and diverse workplace, we understand that you might not meet all the requirements stated in the description, but we encourage you to apply anyway. You might be the right candidate for this role or other roles.
Flora Food Group is an employer committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace and equal opportunities for all. We recruit based only on values, qualifications, performance, skills, behaviours, experience, and knowledge. We ensure job advertisements are free from unintentional bias.
No personal characteristics should be a barrier to joining Flora Food Group. We prohibit discrimination and harassment based on race, color, sex, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, or other personal characteristics.