The Senior Manager of Culinary Commercialization will drive the development of upstreamed food products and ingredients in line with our mission of connecting people to real food. This role brings benchtop R&D ideas to a production state. Within the Culinary department, this Senior Manager will own cross-functional partnerships with the Quality Assurance Team, Supply Chain Team, while also interacting closely with the Food Safety team and the Marketing/PR teams. This role reports to the Head of Culinary.

More of What You'll Do:

• Upstreaming/Commercialization Lead:
• New Supplier Production Partners
• Owns the identification, vetting, and initial onboarding of potential new suppliers for emerging products and initiatives within Sweetgreen.
• Authors Culinary RFPs as needed to help gather suppliers and supplier examples for emerging products and initiatives.
• Works closely with the Sweetgreen Chef Team to match an in-house gold standard (if one exists) for new SKUs.
• Leads tasting rounds within the culinary team and provides feedback to suppliers to dial in ingredients, appearance, aroma, flavor, texture, etc to meet Sweetgreen standards.
• Secondary Supplier Production Partners
• Works collaboratively with Supply Chain and Quality Assurance to identify, vet, and onboard secondary suppliers for existing Sweetgreen SKUs to help provide cost-savings, product improvements, supplier redundancy, etc.
• Leads tasting rounds within the culinary team and acts as the culinary voice that provides feedback to suppliers with respect to ingredients, appearance, aroma, flavor, texture, etc to match the original or existing SKU.
• Core Product Refinement
• Works closely with the Supply Chain and Quality Assurance team as needed to address product changes like ingredient substitutions, quality improvements, cost reductions, etc.
• Leads tasting rounds within the culinary team and acts as the culinary voice that provides feedback to suppliers with respect to ingredients, appearance, aroma, flavor, texture, etc to match the original or existing SKU.
• BOH Optimization
• Works collaboratively with OPS, Supply Chain, Food Safety, and Quality Assurance on the upstreaming of existing in-house prepped ingredients to help find quality improvements and labor savings.
  
  
• QA Liaison
• Meets regularly with the QA Team on behalf of the Culinary Team to give product and project status updates.
• Authors the initial draft of Sweetgreen Product SKU Specifications
• Works closely with the QA team as the culinary liaison ensuring that existing SKUs are produced and received at an acceptable level of quality as per the product specification
• Is the lead culinary representative at quarterly product cuttings
• Supply Chain Liaison:
• Meets regularly with Supply Chain on behalf of the Culinary Team to give product and project status updates.
• Acts as the Culinary Team “intake person” for Supply Chain culinary requests

Qualifications:

• 4-year degree in restaurant management, business administration, operations management or like field
• Preferred Masters degree in food science, food production or like field
• 5+ years of experience working in food production or commercialization
• Experience with fast casual operations
• Experience with a large vendor network
• String project tracking skills
• Highly analytical approach to problem solving using both qualitative and quantitative data; natural curiosity and desire for continuous improvement.
• Mastery of Google suite of apps (or like)
• Excellent communications skills with the ability to persuade stakeholders with sound analysis and combined expertise

What you'll get:

• Highly competitive pay + bonus plan
• Three different medical plans to suit your and your family's needs
• Dental and Vision insurance
• Flexible PTO plan
• 401k program
• Employee HSA and FSA
• Complimentary greens
• An opportunity to make a real impact on the people around you, both by growing them and by connecting them to real food
• To live the sweetlife and celebrate your passion + purpose
• A collaborative team of people who live our core values and have your back
• A clear career path with opportunities for development, both personally and professionally
• Free sweetgreen swag

Come join the sweetlife!

About sweetgreen

sweetgreen is on a mission to build healthier communities by connecting people to real food. We passionately believe that real food should be convenient and accessible to everyone. Every day in each sweetgreen, our 3,500 team members make food from scratch, using fresh ingredients and produce delivered that morning. And in our local communities, we’re committed to leaving people better than we found them. We’re in the business of feeding people, and we’re out to change what that means.

sweetgreen provides equal opportunities for everyone that works for us and everyone that applies to join our team, without regard to sex or gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, race, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, pregnancy, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, any service, past, present, or future, in the uniformed services of the United States (military or veteran status), or any other consideration protected by federal, state, or local law.

sweetgreen participates in the federal government's E-Verify program to determine employment eligibility. To learn more about the E-Verify program, please click here.