How you will make history here…
The Executive Chef of NAFS (North American Food Service) is responsible for leading and building culinary strategy and execution for the business. Influence and drive culinary excellence in the product development, business development, and innovation process.
1) Translation of culinary trends and consumer insights into innovative prototypes and line extensions.
2) Apply culinary inspiration to raise the bar on the quality of our existing products.
3) Influence and collaborate with cross functional partners for the best possible product outcome (training and education on culinary selling story).
4) Build, foster, and leverage client relationships to make NAFS an undisputed partner of choice.
5) Collaborate with cross-functional Campbell’s chefs to support culinary innovation.
6) Collaboration, inspiration & leadership with our broker culinary team.
Position reports directly to Director Enterprise Culinary
What you will do…
- Apply and demonstrate hands on culinary expertise across the current product portfolio & future innovation in ensuring great tasting food/beverages for our consumers, striking the right balance between hands on product development and directing the efforts of others
- Identify and tracking of influential foodservice and consumer cooking trends.
- Provides formal guidance and supervision to Senior Chef. Reviews assignments, work plans, and experimental results of others prior to delivery to management.
- Serve as the culinary voice for NAFS
- Provide strategic leadership for all culinary functions,
- Partnership with R&D partners, external chefs (brokers) & foodservice operators to support innovation for the NAFS portfolio (soups, sauces, entrees, sides, beverages- frozen and shelf stable products)
- Drive business strategies and objectives within NAFS Strategic
- Strong understanding of competitive landscape and ability to win new business through duplication projects and menu gap analysis.
- Knowledge of restaurant operations and can navigate and simplify complex BOH (back of house) systems by providing solutions for foodservice operations.
- Understanding of foodservice operators’ headwinds (Cost constraints labor/food) and menu complexity.
- Cross-functional collaboration and understanding and willingness to learn more deeply the manufacturing capabilities and constraints to enable successful translation and scale up of Culinary Gold Standards to Culinary Prototypes through fully commercialized products
- Collaboration with internal and external marketing teams.
- Develop & mentor direct culinary reports.
- Demonstrate culinary thought leadership, business strategy, & creative problem solving.
Who you will work with…
- Highly proficient culinary expertise & collaborative working style
- Sales minded professional
- Proficient decision making
- Project management & prioritization of projects with team
- Influence / communicate with functional partners and clients in a way that fosters collaboration
- Effective presentations skills & ability to influence
- Mentoring/coaching skills
- Excellent communication skills- Verbal & Written
- Some understanding of scale up/manufacturing challenges
What you bring to the table (must haves)…
- HS diploma or equivalent
- 10+ years of progressive restaurant experience, including 5+ years as an Executive Chef in high-end establishments, with proven success leading culinary teams, driving innovative menu development, and managing full P&L performance.
It would be great if you have (nice to haves)…
- Education: Culinary Degree (AOS) from an Accredited Culinary School preferred
- Bachelor’s Degree preferred
- Minimum of 7 to 10 years CPG or culinary industry related experience required
- Must have experience working in restaurant / foodservice operations, leading culinary teams and culinary projects
Working Conditions:
- Camden office based, within the Campbells Kitchens & Labs, with consistent travel (20-30%), With the potential to be higher at times.
Join our talent community
We’re proud to be a purpose-driven company. Our goal is simple: to connect people through food they love. It’s the reason we innovate, grow, and show up every day because food brings people together.