Job Type
Full-time
Description
About us.
We're Tovala, a food-tech company completely reinventing home cooking to save consumers time. Through an innovative combination of hardware, software, and food, we give our customers a way to enjoy really good, good-for-you meals without sacrificing time to do whatever matters to them. We've amassed a loyal, rapidly growing following in just three years, radically changing the day-to-day lives of people across the country and successfully creating a new model for the food industry. We're looking for great people to join our team of hardworking, food-loving nerds.
About the job.
Food is one of the pillars of our business-and our company has grown to the point where it's time to expand our food team. We're looking for a Commercialization Lead to join our operations team on a full-time basis.
Since we're both a fresh food and technology business, this role will be different from traditional food industry roles. At Tovala, you will take newly created recipes that were developed at our Chicago test Kitchen and work with our culinary, packaging, production & procurement teams to guide them through all stages of the commercialization process, beginning with feasibility and ending with initial product runs.
How you'll spend your time at Tovala.

• Serve as a communications conduit between production and development teams for ongoing process improvement
• Assess new recipes and run initial labor, yield and feasibility projections. Work with the Operations Engineering team to determine make vs buy decisions.
• Using above data guide team to a decision on whether to scale internally or look to outsource
• Lead internal scaling of new recipes and processes
• Work with vendors to guide implementation of outsourced items
• Partner with production, development & packaging teams to assess and successfully implement meals
• Support opening our production team during the rollout of new recipes, processes and equipment

Requirements

• Minimum five years of experience scaling manufactured food products from bench to to production volume in while managing multiple projects and deadlines
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Strong understanding of recipe scaling and implementation
• Experience working with third party vendors on custom products
• Read to work in a fast-paced start-up environment.
• Willingness to travel

About You.

• You are an optimistic and resourceful self-starter, ready to take on any challenge.
• You're hardworking, disciplined, and skilled at planning, organizing, prioritizing, and executing simultaneous projects and activities.
• You have culinary vision and passion for food, with an understanding of industry trends.
• You enjoy working in a small-group work environment.
• You want to work in an environment that takes a people-first approach; values humility, integrity, and ambition; and is focused on creating a culture that keeps people happy and challenged.