Manager, Menu Strategy

The Manager of Menu Strategy plays a key role in the success of Home Chef’s business by running projects within a key team of the menu and culinary process. The candidate will be responsible for ideating, vetting, and developing product ideas within their vertical and collaborating with stakeholders across the organization to bring these products to life.

The position is part of the Culinary team within Product and reports to a Director of Menu Strategy. The role is based in Chicago, IL with some travel.

Detailed Responsibilities

Product Line Ownership:

• Run entire menu setting process within their respective menu vertical(s) (e.g. Extras, Family, etc.) including but not  limited to leveraging insights, culinary R&D, photography and content, and financial metrics to design, set, publish, and track menu success
• Provide input into future road maps including optimized menu design and do everything necessary to ensure successful completion of the related projects
• Communicate and build alignment with internal and external stakeholders to remove roadblocks and prioritize projects; serve as a partner within Culinary in thinking about the next generation of products
• Identify subtasks and smaller scale projects to collaborate with other Menu Strategy team members with oversight to ensure successful execution

Innovation & New Product Development:

• Work with all available internal and external stakeholders to innovate, ideate and develop new products, processes and customer experiences
• Source and stress test new product ideas in collaboration with Consumer Insights, Supply Chain, Marketing, Finance, Culinary, Operations teams
• Interpret data, research and trends that impact the meal solutions eCommerce space and develop actionable insights for execution
• Integrate voice of customer into all aspects of the work and cooperate with Consumer Insights to transform these learnings into tangible actions
• Actively participate in daily stationing & tastings of R&D meals

Cross-Departmental Collaboration and Execution:

• Collaborate internally with Culinary, Supply Chain, Marketing, Finance, Ops and others to ensure smooth and successful delivery of projects
• Lead working teams to bring new projects from idea generation to full execution and rollout
• Communicate ongoing project updates and priorities within Home Chef to ensure organizational alignment
• Develop and source all inputs to shepherd projects through the Home Chef stage gate process

Product Strategy

• Seek to optimize launched products, thinking through ways to drive improvements to the top and bottom line
• Quantify both historical decisions and future recommendations, bringing forth data driven decisions 
• Collaborate on best practices and share learnings with peers working on other product types
• Set the mid- to long-term product vision for the respective vertical and ensure alignment across Home Chef teams

This position requires 10-20% travel.

Qualifications

The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability needed for this role. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities.

• Bachelor’s Degree. An advanced degree is a plus
• 2-4 years of experience in a rigorous fast-paced work environment – CPG, product development, innovation, consulting, startups
• Ability to work within a scrappy ambiguous fast-moving environment
• Extremely detail-oriented and organized with the ability to develop and make progress against multiple concurrent project plans
• Data-driven decision maker who can use data to drive, validate and make progress against potential courses of action
• Ideal candidate will have experience working in the fresh and packaged food space
• Self-starter inclined towards finding solutions and who is comfortable working independently and with a team
• Strong communicator and relationship builder
• Intellectually curious
• Must have a sense of urgency and be capable of dealing with fast-changing priorities and ambiguity
• No ego team player excited to solve a wide range of challenges
• Must be able to taste and provide thorough feedback on every meal and ingredient sample test in the kitchen, including vegetarian, pork, chicken, steak, and seafood meals. 

 

More About Us