Culinary Manager

Location: HWY 403 & Dundas St W, Mississauga

Shift: This position will provide a full time consistent schedule covering ourMonday to Friday operations from 9:00am - 5:00pm, availability outside these hours will be required as per operational needs. 

About the Role

We are looking for a Culinary Manager to lead the success of our recipe development and commercialization teams as we expand our newest brand, Factor: a ready-to-heat meal delivery service that helps customers across Canada capture the meal-time convenience they’re after without sacrificing on premium quality or nutrition.

Our Culinary team is at the heart of the action, working closely  with cross-functional teams to ideate, create, launch, and scale new recipes, all while continuously elevating existing ones. You’ll turn creative ideas into reality, using customer feedback and success metrics. You’ll leverage a process-driven approach to develop new, exciting products that hit the mark on customer satisfaction, performance, cost, and complexity. Let’s make food magic happen, together!

This role is based at our Mississauga site, where you’ll lead our team of research and development chefs in  our commercial test kitchen, and just steps away from our production kitchen.  You’ll operate frequently within our production environment, helping to set and maintain our high product quality standards. As the in-house culinary expert, you’ll be responsible for establishing what ‘great’ looks like, and communicating your knowledge effectively with partners internally and externally.

What you will be doing:

• Ensure all recipes are designed for scale. Work closely with the Kitchen Ops team to understand operational constraints and challenges, lead culinary-related continuous improvement initiatives to drive product quality improvements over time.
• Lead your team through weekly culinary assessment, R&D tasting sessions, and meal feedback review sessions, actively using data to set the bar and measure progress towards our physical product quality targets. Utilize customer feedback data to identify key culinary risks & opportunities, regularly communicating them with cross-functional stakeholders – including production, procurement, and menu planning.
• Collaborate closely with Procurement to facilitate new ingredient onboarding from ideation to in-menu application, including in part sensory testing and assessment.

Lead the success of our Research & Development program and culture

• Lead  our Research & Development  team in delivering a healthy meal database, establishing processes and procedures to consistently deliver high-quality meals aligned with our customer preferences and performance, cost, and complexity constraints;
• Work with our Menu Planning team to identify and address gaps in our recipe database by developing and launching new recipes that exceed our internal targets.
• Lead a recipe graduation process that allows us to improve on existing meals based on customer feedback and performance scoring, continually delivering an exceptional meal experience. 
• Collaborate closely with your production first-team and commercialization chefs (more on this below) to identify and action opportunities for operational improvement, as observed through an R&D quality 

Lead the success of our Meal Commercialization program and culture

• Lead the team responsible for ingredient & process scaling of R&D meals at our facility, ensuring high-quality process definition and adherence, and ensuring customers receive the highest quality meal experiences possible. Support the development of scalable, repeatable processes for both our production environment and test-kitchen-to-production-environment hand-off.
• Lead the establishment of a yield data-collection program at our facility, building scalable processes that support recipe quality and waste reduction.
• Provide quality assurance and supervision in our production environment. Set culinary standards for recipes, and audit production samples to ensure adherence. Ensure finished products meet R&D standards.
• Act as a liaison between our production, R&D, procurement, and product teams to ensure that production batches are aligned with culinary standards and specifications. 

At a minimum, you have: 

• Degree or diploma in culinary arts, culinary science, or a similar field.
• 5+ years experience corporate food R&D and/or running a commissary or large restaurant/banquet/catering.
• Highly organized and detail-oriented with a track-record of turning ideas into reality, meeting deadlines, and not overlooking key details. Comfortable juggling multiple priorities at once.
• A true process leader, willing and capable of developing processes where little exists and continuously iterating to deliver improved results.
• A strong understanding of local and broader Canadian taste profiles, culinary trends, and preferences 
• Knowledge of key dietary lifestyles such as the Ketogenic Diet, low/slow carb diet, and vegan and vegetarian diets.
• A passion for staying up to speed on the most current research on the science of nutrition.
• Entrepreneurial with an ownership mindset, enjoy working in small teams, taking ownership of assigned responsibilities, and always thinking beyond the scope of a given assignment.
• Innovative, creative, and constantly looking for ways to improve upon things.
• Customer centricity, able to understand how decision-making abilities will impact internal and external customers.

What you’ll get in return:

• Competitive salary and health benefits
• 75% discount on HelloFresh or Chefs Plate weekly box subscription
• High impact work to help feed thousands of families in Canada
• Opportunity to learn and grow
• Work with a hard-working and supportive team

Working Conditions:

It’s no surprise that as a food company, we use many ingredients that may be considered common allergens (i.e. peanuts, tree nuts, milk, etc.). Whether this role is based out of our headquarters or one of our distribution centers, it is possible that you may be exposed to such allergens in this role. If you have any concerns with being exposed to any particular food ingredients, including meat, please disclose this during the hiring process.

If this sounds like you, please click the "Apply Now" button. If this role doesn’t quite match what you’re looking for, but you’d like to know more about joining the HelloFresh team, please visit our Jobs page to view our other vacancies. We’d love to hear from you!

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