Director, Culinary Training & Strategy for Specialty

Job Summary

Develop long-term culinary growth strategy working cross-functionally across specialty business sites and the GSC to support go-to-market strategy with the Learning and Development team, Sales, Sales Support, Merchandising and Marketing.

Responsibilities

• Culinary: Work with the Sysco culinary leadership team, enterprise strategy counterparts and business leads to move forward and corporate culinary strategy, identify key priorities and choices to deliver as part of the business strategy and manage trade-offs required to realize vision.
• Represent and participate in monthly Sysco culinary leaders meetings driving awareness of products, services and resources to the front-line culinary leaders across all Sysco companies.
• Develop growth strategies and synergies across Sysco to determine how we support and show up for significant culinary-focused industry events.
• Develop and lead our culinary strategies, including conducting analysis on key competitors and potential sources of disruption, framing and structuring disparate ideas and information to make them concrete and actionable.
• Research emerging technologies and work with internal stakeholders to determine business rationale for adoption, potential value and tradeoffs associated with developing new or improved culinary capabilities and services for our customers.
• Develop growth strategy and 3-year strategic plan for our culinary business segments. Transform the food service industry with the best-in-class customer innovation.
• Lead initiatives to drive acquisition and penetration of customers by leveraging both sales channels and direct-to-customer channel, prioritizing culinary services and trends.
• Learning & Development: Develop, implement and lead monthly new item launches sales training to drive awareness of new product additions to catalog through education.
• Lead culinary-focused initiatives and activities at biannual education fairs and other educational events.
• Develop product training growth strategy, training materials and lead trainings for the sales team focusing on culinary trends to best support Sysco front-line sales teams and their customers.
• Conduct both quantitative and qualitative analysis to evaluate new market opportunities for the enterprise that extends beyond our current business and develop a center of excellence for culinary trends and positioning, providing key recommendations for senior executives.
• Create strategy for new sales consultant orientation and onboarding.
• Sales & Merch: Create the process of identifying product category gaps and partner with Merchandising team to finalize gap assortments.
• Develop and lead the culinary marketing strategy working cross-functionally with our internal and external Sysco marketing teams to ensure the continued focus and drive to be a culinary-focused brand and destination to stay in the know of specialty and gourmet food.
• Evaluate key organizational questions to ensure our copy is best positioned to deliver on our commitments to customers, clients and shareholders.

Requirements

• Culinary Arts degree or a Bachelor’s degree in a related discipline; or equivalent combination of education and experience required.
• Experience Required: 8+ years of experience in food and hospitality as head chef or lead development and implementation of culinary growth strategy.
• Preferred: 10+ years of food and hospitality and B2B experience.

Skills

• Exceptional interpersonal, collaboration, written, verbal and presentation skills.
• Proficient use of MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook).
• Professional and customer-centric attitude.
• Demonstrated proven experience highlighting passion for specialty food, culinary skillset and hospitality industry.
• Demonstrated and proven experience highlighting ability to lead, manage and drive results by influencing people and teams who do not work directly for you.
• Strategic thinking and tactical execution from a customer perspective.
• Ability to structure unique problems and lead cross-functional teams in a way that enables the organization to make significant progress quickly.
• Strong ability to manage ambiguity and guide the organization through it towards clear and decisive action plans.
• Proven ability to establish credibility and influence executive-level stakeholders as well as the ability to work across boundaries and lead through influence.
• Leader/doer with the ability to operate effectively and influence others in a matrix organization.

Physical Demands / Work Environment

• Regularly required to sit, stand, walk and use hands and fingers to operate computer keyboard, mouse and other offices/manufacturing equipment, telephone to talk and hear, and stoop, kneel, crouch, crawl and balance.
• Frequently required to reach with hands and arms and may lift up to 50 pounds.
• Travel 50% travel is required.