Director of National Accounts, Food Safety & Quality

Job Description

Job Description

As the FSQA Director of National Accounts , this role will be responsible for supporting the food safety and quality strategies of any National account within the Fresh Division. This role will largely be customer facing.

The role will work closely with the Account Manager and Executive team to become intimate with the key client strategies, challenges, gaps, and risks to be an advocate and consultant to Fresh Division clients as it relates to FSQA areas. This role will largely be facing the clients' FSQA teams and executives. The role will also support day to day food safety needs of the client such as substitute supplier review, food safety claims management, specification tolerance, etc. As well as supporting clients' on-going quality improvement and FSQA initiatives driven by the needs of the clients.

The role will be the Account Manager's primary liaison for food safety and quality initiatives with other departmental organizations and teams. The role will ensure awareness and compliance with our clients' food safety and quality initiatives.

The role will continuously engage with industry Food Safety individuals and organizations to ensure continuous knowledge, awareness, and growth. The role work with the other Fresh Division Food Safety leaders to ensure the team at large keeps up with current policy and current regulatory best practices. The position will leverage continuous improvement practices and industry best practices to improve our client programs and initiatives, while ensuring the policies and procedures of the Fresh Division Food Safety team are being followed.

The role will work closely with the Senior Director of Food Safety and Compliance as well as lead and manage the Food Safety Project Manager. This role will work with the FSQA Project Manager, National Accounts position to ensure all Client's projects and initiatives are being monitored and followed through on commitments. The role will work with other teams within the Fresh Services Food Safety team to ensure the efficiency of task and project management. The role will also work cross functionally internally with other teams within the Fresh Division such as Contracts and Procurement, Supply Chain, Sales, Produce Support Specialist team, etc.

This position is remotely based. We are unable to offer work sponsorship for this role.

Who are we?

Buyers Edge Platform is one of the fastest-growing companies in the exciting Foodservice Technology industry. Buyers Edge Platform is made up of more than a dozen companies who work together to help restaurants and other foodservice operators reduce their costs, streamline their supply chains, and utilize technology to run their businesses more efficiently and profitably. We are driven by our entrepreneurial spirit, diverse portfolio of companies and our inclusive and collaborative atmosphere. Our values-focused culture is best experienced at one of our 14 offices, including marquee locations in Chicago, West Palm Beach, New London, CT and Waltham, MA.

The Buyer's Edge Platform Fresh Division is an entity comprised of both Fresh Concepts and Produce Alliance with over 35 years of produce management solutions. The Fresh Division provides fresh produce category management services including procurement, national distribution, information services, and food safety assurance to food service clients across North America, the Caribbean and beyond. The Fresh Division has a national footprint of over 125+ industry leading distributors in North America, partnerships with the most premier grower shippers, and combined purchasing power of over 6 billion.

Your impact:

• Client support and program development of Food Safety initiatives
• Align with clients on key Food Safety initiatives.
• Participate in recurring client and account management level engagements to ensure on-going alignment. Both virtually and in person at clients' locations.
• Ensure client's food safety initiatives are clearly defined, met, or exceeded by our team.
• Support product Quality initiatives.
• Provide technical expertise with client specification development.
• Provide technical support in specification documentation (ensuring that an achievable and measurable specification is achieved).
• Support Solutions, Procurement, and suppliers with technical aspects in development of new products.
• Industry expertise and regulation development / adherence.
• Ensure clients are informed of all material changes in food safety policy that may impact their business.
• Ensure clients understand and are aware of the latest changes in policy and the client's responsibility / exposure related to changes in food safety policy.
• Through on-going client engagement, provide consultation and expertise to clients related to mitigation and proactive activities clients should be engaging in to prepare for changes in food safety policy and regulations.
• Attend industry conferences for personal professional development and lead client engagement at such conferences.

About you:

• A positive attitude, with a we before me mentality
• Accountability – holding yourself and others accountable for commitments.
• Professional Integrity – keeping commitments, acting with honor, conveying respect, and maintaining high moral standards.
• Trust – conduct business in a way that builds confidence in all team members.
• Competence – apply what you know in an effective manner, building team and client credibility, and ensuring the best possible results.
• Desire – genuine drive and interest to help our clients and team members.
• Leadership- Lead by example. Embrace and enforce our corporate values.
• Independence- Ability to work autonomously through high priority projects.
• Teamwork – contribute positively to team objectives, work positively with others to achieve both personal goals and team goals. Can work with the Food Safety team as well as cross functional teams across the Fresh Division.
• Excellence With Agility – ability to seek solutions and solve problems.
• Efficiently Deliver Solutions - work with the Fresh Division Food Safety team to follow our processes and procedures to maintain efficient working structures.
• Strong relationship and networking skills are a must. The ability to develop and maintain great personal and business relationships is paramount to success.
• Supply chain knowledge including distribution and logistics, procurement, manufacturing, transportation, and inventory management, accounting, supply chain visibility, etc.
• Solid understanding/aptitude for technical and analytical skills, demonstrating experiences with several of the following: spreadsheets, databases, SCM planning and execution applications, including ERP systems.
• Solid Team Building and problem-solving skills, with demonstrated experience of individual and team-based problem solving.
• Great organizational skills including planning, organizing, goal setting, and execution.
• 10+ years experience in a food safety role, preferably Produce, Meat and/or Seafood.
• 5+ years experience in a processor or distributor facility OR within a National Foodservice organization (one of our current clients or the like preferred)
• Master's degree in food science / safety or related studies preferred.
• Solid Leadership and Business Accountability Track Record
• Foodservice industry experience highly desirable, either on supplier, distributor, or client sides.
• Demonstrated project management and superior personal productivity and oral, written communication skills.
• Demonstrated ability to work positively with cross functional teams.
• Excellent communication skills required. Including listening, written, oral, and demonstrated group presentation. Excellent personal productivity skills and communications such as word, power-point, excel, etc.

What's in this for you?

Amazing coverages to start. Medical, dental, and vision coverages are just the beginning! We also offer ancillary plans, such as flexible spending accounts for both health and dependent care, critical illness, accident, and voluntary life as well as company paid life and long-term-disability plans! On top of this, we also offer a 401(k) plan with company match.

Invest in your success. We will provide you with a thorough training and development program; and offer competitive compensation.

Live well = Work well. Relax with our Personal Responsibility Paid Time Off policy where you don't have to accrue time off in order to take it!

We welcome all.

We are committed to creating a diverse environment and are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to actual or perceived race, color, creed, religion, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, age, sex or gender (including pregnancy, childbirth and pregnancy-related conditions), gender identity or expression (including transgender status), sexual orientation, marital status, military service and veteran status, physical or mental disability, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state or local laws and ordinances.