Business Growth Advisor - Food & Beverage

About the role

This role is based in midtown Manhattan, New York. New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) is New Zealand's international business development agency. We work with some of New Zealand's most forward-thinking companies, helping them grow bigger, better, and faster around the world. We're looking for a commercially savvy advisor with strong American market experience to help those companies turn opportunity into tangible business growth.

Responsibilities

• Work with a portfolio of New Zealand Food & Beverage (F&B) companies to support their growth in the U.S. market.
• Build relationships with company founders, key executives, and commercial teams to understand their goals, opportunities, and challenges.
• Help companies explore growth opportunities across channels such as ingredients, foodservice, private label, and enterprise partnerships.
• Support companies to better understand opportunities and challenges in the U.S. market and to build networks in the US, with relevant customers, partners, service providers, industry organizations, and other useful contacts.
• Help companies access NZTE's services, tools, resources, and networks.
• Support companies at different stages of growth, from early market validation through to expansion and market development.
• Maintain and grow industry relationships that strengthen NZTE's understanding of the U.S. market.
• Contribute to sector initiatives, customer engagement activity, and wider New Zealand government inter-agency collaboration opportunities.
• Work collaboratively with colleagues across North America and New Zealand to deliver value for New Zealand companies.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in the U.S. Food & Beverage sector, with experience in one or more areas such as protein, dairy, seafood, ingredients, foodservice, private label, or nutrition.
• Commercial experience in areas such as strategy, advisory, management consulting, business development, category management, distribution, sourcing, or related disciplines.
• An understanding of how Food & Beverage companies bring products and services to market in the United States.
• Experience working with customers, distributors, manufacturers, retailers, foodservice operators, or other industry participants.
• Strong communication and relationship-building skills.
• Sound commercial judgement and a practical, solutions-focused approach.
• The ability to manage multiple priorities and work across a diverse portfolio of companies.
• An interest in helping businesses grow and succeed in the U.S. market.
• A collaborative approach and willingness to work across a range of stakeholders and teams.