Food Safety & Compliance Specialist

Job Description

Job Description

We’re looking for a Food Safety & Compliance Specialist to join our team in Columbus, OH and report to the Director of Production, Quality Assurance & Food Safety. This role plays an important part in ensuring our products, processes, and Shops operations meet food safety, quality, and regulatory standards while supporting innovation and continuous improvement.

The ideal candidate will exemplify the talent, hustle, guts, resilience, and empathy for which we recruit. In this role, you’ll support new product development by providing the regulatory and product information needed to create new packaging and participating in product scale-ups as needed. You’ll also support our Shops channel by providing regulatory guidance, monitoring pest control reports, and helping develop training materials for new and existing processes. A key part of this role is using customer feedback to identify trends and opportunities for improvement. You’ll help turn those insights into meaningful improvements across our suppliers, production partners, product formulations, and internal production facility.

Hybrid Work Environment: This position follows a hybrid schedule, with Mondays and Fridays working from home and Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays working from our Columbus office.

OUR COMPANY: Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams is a modern American ice cream company dedicated to making better ice creams and bringing people together. Founded in 2002 by James Beard Award-winning ice cream maker Jeni Britton—who introduced a modern, ingredient-driven style of ice cream making that revolutionized the industry, forever changing the way ice cream is made—Jeni’s has emerged over the past two decades as the new standard by which all other ice creams are judged. Today, the creative-led, community-spirited company is a certified B Corporation with 80 scoop shops (and counting), an online shop with nationwide shipping at jenis.com, and distribution in top grocery stores across the country.

OUR MISSION: Team Jeni's is a nationwide team of people who bring their talent, hustle, guts, resilience and empathy (lots of heart, too) to making better ice creams and bringing people together. Working at Jeni's means devotion to service. Serving by caring about ourselves, each other, our communities, ice creams and customers. We are a force for good!

This position is responsible for:

• Entering data to support development of nutrition panels and ingredient statements to support development of product packaging.

• Generating UPCs for new products and maintaining a GS1 database for existing products.

• Acting as the primary technical contact for the Shops team. This support includes regulatory guidance, quality management, food safety, and new product development for shops. Works with the Senior Food Safety and Quality Assurance Specialist to resolve issues.

• Monitoring and analyzing customer and scoop shop feedback. Reviews data daily, noting trends, severity of consumer feedback, and provides quarterly summaries of feedback trends to the Leadership Team. Uses data to drive product improvements. Flags trends to the Senior Food Safety & Quality Assurance Specialist and works closely with them to investigate issues and drive improvement. 

• Monitoring production partner specification compliance via review of CoAs and retention sample evaluation. 

• Verifying that food safety and quality assurance procedures are being followed in the R&D kitchen via observation, documentation review, and occasional investigations.

• Monitoring production partner and supplier compliance, occasionally traveling (approximately once a quarter) to production partner sites to meet with their teams and observe Jeni’s production runs. 

Qualified applicants will have the following education, experience and skills:

• B.S. degree in Food Science, or a related field

• Intellectually curious and highly detail-oriented.

• A self-starter with a strong sense of ownership 

• Exhibits Jeni’s Core Values of: Talent, Hustle, Guts, Resilience and Empathy 

• Customer service experience or experience supporting internal teams

• Strong teamwork and collaboration skills

• Ability to problem-solve and find solutions

The position is eligible for the following benefits:

• Competitive compensation

• Excellent insurance (health, dental, vision) 

• Paid time off, including sick, vacation, and holidays

• 401k participation and 4% match on 401k contributions after 3 months of employment 

• A one-month paid sabbatical after 3 years of continuous service 

• Annual paid day to volunteer for a non-profit organization that matters to you 

• 50% discount at Jeni’s Scoop Shops and online

Jeni's is an equal opportunity employer. Said our way, we love and honor differences, and we love sharing common values such as talent, hustle, guts, resilience, and empathy. Our differences are a primary source of our team's strength and we crave having a team rich with diversity which is creativity and art in its human form.