Food and Beverage Project Manager

Responsible for driving commercialization of culinary inspired foods while working cross functionally with multiple teams, including Product Development, Operations and Procurement.  Requires knowledge of formulation, great communication and organization. Offers room for growth and competitive benefits.

This position provides overall Project Management responsibility for product innovation projects, customer-based projects, product changes and cost savings opportunities that contribute to business growth, brand maintenance and efficiency initiatives.  Effective communication and leadership skills in working with a cross-functional team through roadblocks and issues that would impede progress are required.  Demonstrated ability to influence across business units and effectively coordinate external and internal resources is needed along with a proven project management track record leading and delivering large, complex projects in CPG or Food.

Essential Responsibilities:

• Lead commercialization projects within the organization and align key resources at all levels of the organization to ensure timely completion of project deliverables
• Utilize the company’s process and other existing tools to manage multiple development projects from project approval to customer delivery
• Clearly define, manage, and control project requirements, scope, and timelines. Ensure there is cross-functional alignment on project objectives and deliverables.  Build project schedules by identifying sequence of activities, duration, resource availability, and schedule constraints
• Lead effective project team meetings. Encourage cross-functional collaboration, provide direction to project team, outline priorities, assign tasks as needed, and address issues/risks impacting projects
• Actively manage and communicate detailed project trackers ensuring all impacted functional teams and stakeholders have an understanding of risks, issues and activities related to the projects
• Report out key project management metrics to various functions and levels, develop and assist the team in drawing out “plan B” options, escalate issues and risks in a timely manner to stay on schedule
• Assist in driving efficiency efforts including SKU management, ingredient and packaging consolidation
• Ability to work independently with the experience and judgment to plan and accomplish goals; detail oriented
• Ability to work on multiple projects and a variety of complicated tasks at the same time and prioritize tasks; organized
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills for interacting and collaborating within all levels of the organization from line employees to management team, and across functional areas (R&D, sales, quality, marketing, etc.) to resolve conflict and proactively address issues
• Ability to express technical information in a user-friendly language and style; detail-oriented; strong documentation skills; present information effectively in one-on-one, and group settings, including management
• Strong ability to communicate clearly in writing to document requirements and translate into technical solutions
• Local travel will be required

**If you’d like to hear more about this opportunity and others we are currently working on, please contact Jeff Fee at jfee@cps4jobs.com.

JO:  18.24JF

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Core Competencies:

• Knowledge of Stage-Gate
• Experience commercializing new food or consumer products and managing changes to existing products
• Advanced PC skills using Microsoft Office products and MS Project is a requirement, along with the ability to generate graphs, presentations and charts
• Proven experience and as background successfully completing large and complex projects on-time and within budget is required
• Ability to handle multiple projects concurrently and work cross functionally is required

Position Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree in business, engineering, food science, marketing or other related discipline
• A minimum of 2 years’ project management experience is required
• Formal certification in Project Management (from PMI or equivalent Project Management Association) a plus

**If you’d like to hear more about this opportunity and others we are currently working on, please contact Jeff Fee at jfee@cps4jobs.com.

JO:  18.24JF

#LI-JF1