About Kettle Cuisine
Kettle Cuisine is an innovative food company with roots in artisan soup-making and a growing portfolio of fresh and frozen food solutions. We partner with foodservice and retail customers to deliver high-quality products across soups, sauces, prepared sides, sous vide proteins, meal solutions, broths, and related categories.
Position Summary
The Vice President, Foodservice is a senior commercial leader responsible for accelerating profitable growth across Kettle Cuisine’s foodservice business. This role develops and executes the foodservice sales strategy, delivers revenue and profit objectives, strengthens key customer and channel partnerships, and builds a high-performing organization capable of winning across a complex, multi-channel market.
The VP Foodservice leads a team of seven to eight regional managers and directors and provides clear direction, accountability, coaching, and resource prioritization across the field organization. The role also directly owns the strategic Sysco relationship, leads broker management at the headquarters level, and ensures consistent broker execution across regions.
The customer scope includes broadline distributors, re-distributors, commercial and non-commercial foodservice accounts, cash & carry, and convenience-store customers. Success requires a strategic, externally oriented leader who can translate market opportunities into focused plans, mobilize cross-functional teams, and convert Kettle Cuisine’s portfolio capabilities into sustained customer growth.
Key Responsibilities
Commercial strategy and profitable growth
- Develop and execute annual and multi-year foodservice sales strategies that meet or exceed revenue, contribution margin, and market-share goals.
- Translate company and channel priorities into clear customer, regional, portfolio, and broker plans with measurable objectives, owners, milestones, and performance reviews.
- Build a balanced growth agenda across core business retention, new customer acquisition, expanded distribution, private-label opportunities, branded growth, new product launches, and portfolio expansion.
- Identify market whitespace and prioritize the highest-value opportunities across distributors, re-distributors, operators, non-commercial accounts, cash & carry, and convenience-store channels.
- Establish a disciplined operating cadence for pipeline management, forecasting, sales performance reviews, and corrective action.
- Partner with Finance to manage pricing, trade investment, customer profitability, forecasts, and annual operating-plan delivery.
Team leadership and organizational performance
- Lead, coach, and develop a team of seven to eight regional managers and directors responsible for foodservice market execution.
- Set clear expectations for account coverage, call activity, pipeline quality, forecast accuracy, broker productivity, customer engagement, and profitable growth.
- Build a culture of accountability, collaboration, customer focus, and continuous development.
- Recruit, retain, and develop high-caliber commercial talent; establish succession plans and individualized development priorities.
- Ensure regional leaders understand the broader foodservice strategy and consistently convert it into actionable territory and customer plans.
- Ensure growth plans are accurately translated into sales forecasts and demand plan and own Foodservice portion of S&OP plan.
- Remove barriers, allocate resources, and create cross-regional collaboration on strategic customers, launches, and best practices.
Strategic customer leadership and Sysco ownership
- Maintain direct executive ownership of the Sysco relationship, including senior-level relationships, joint business planning, annual objectives, innovation discussions, issue resolution, and performance reviews.
- Build and maintain trusted relationships with senior decision-makers at other priority distributors, re-distributors, commercial operators, non-commercial accounts and GPOs, cash & carry customers, and convenience store customers.
- Lead customer strategy for the most important enterprise opportunities, ensuring Kettle Cuisine is aligned across Sales, Marketing, Culinary & Innovation, Finance, Operations, Supply Chain, Quality, and Customer Service.
- Develop customer-specific growth plans that link customer needs to Kettle Cuisine’s portfolio, capabilities, innovation pipeline, service model, and category expertise.
- Ensure customer commitments are clearly documented, internally aligned, and translated into executable plans.
Broker leadership and execution
- Manage broker strategy and performance at the headquarters level, including broker selection, role clarity, national priorities, business reviews, training, incentives, and performance expectations.
- Establish a consistent broker operating model, scorecard, and communication cadence across the foodservice organization.
- Ensure regional managers and directors actively manage brokers in their territories, including goal setting, market prioritization, field coaching, customer coverage, training, and quarterly business reviews.
- Hold the organization and broker partners accountable for execution against customer plans, distribution targets, new item placement, sales activity, and profitable growth goals.
- Strengthen broker capabilities by equipping partners with clear selling stories, product knowledge, customer priorities, culinary support, and relevant data and tools.
Portfolio presence and channel expansion
- Advance Kettle Cuisine’s portfolio presence across foodservice channels by increasing points of distribution, expanding item placement, improving assortment quality, and creating stronger customer pull-through.
- Identify opportunities to broaden adoption of soups, sauces, prepared sides, sous vide proteins, meal solutions, broths, and other relevant portfolio categories.
- Partner with Marketing, Culinary & Innovation, and Product Management to sharpen value propositions, selling stories, customer presentations, and commercialization plans.
- Lead the sales component of new product launches, portfolio renovations, private-label programs, and strategic customer innovation initiatives.
- Use customer and market insights to shape assortment, pricing, innovation, and channel strategies.
Cross-functional leadership and execution
- Collaborate with Operations, Supply Chain, Manufacturing, Quality, Customer Service, Finance, Marketing, Culinary & Innovation, and PMO to deliver customer commitments and service excellence.
- Escalate and resolve customer, service, quality, pricing, supply, and commercialization issues with urgency and transparency.
- Represent the foodservice business in senior leadership discussions, annual planning, strategic reviews, customer meetings, trade shows, and industry events.
- Ensure accurate and timely use of CRM, sales reporting, customer plans, forecasts and demand plans, and other commercial systems.
- Maintain the highest standards of personal and business credibility in carrying out the company’s objectives.
Measures of Success
- Delivery of foodservice revenue, profit, margin, and annual-plan commitments.
- Growth of strategic customer relationships, with particular emphasis on Sysco and other priority distribution and operator partners.
- Increased portfolio presence, points of distribution, new item placement, and customer penetration.
- Stronger broker productivity, accountability, and regional execution consistency.
- Improved forecast accuracy, pipeline health, sales discipline, and visibility to risks and opportunities.
- High-performing regional leadership team with clear goals, strong engagement, and visible talent development.
- Effective cross-functional execution of launches, customer plans, and service-recovery actions.
Qualifications and Experience
- Bachelor’s degree in business, marketing, food science, hospitality, or a related field; advanced degree is a plus.
- 12+ years of progressive sales and commercial leadership experience in foodservice, CPG, food manufacturing, or a related industry.
- Demonstrated success leading a distributed sales organization across multiple regions, channels, and customer types.
- Deep understanding of foodservice route-to-market dynamics, including broadline distribution, re-distribution, GPOs, brokers, commercial operators, non-commercial accounts, cash & carry, and convenience-store channels.
- Proven experience managing strategic distributor and operator relationships, ideally including Sysco or comparable national broadline customers.
- Experience building and executing joint business plans, customer growth plans, broker strategies, and multi-year commercial plans.
- Strong financial and business acumen, including pricing, trade investment, margin management, forecasting, and customer profitability.
- Demonstrated ability to expand portfolio presence through distribution growth, assortment expansion, new product placement, private-label programs, and customer innovation.
- Strong executive presence, negotiation skills, presentation skills, and written and verbal communication.
- Experience using CRM and commercial analytics to manage performance and make decisions.
- Willingness and ability to travel frequently, including overnight travel.
Leadership Attributes
- Strategic and commercially minded, with the ability to move between enterprise priorities and field execution.
- Customer-centric and credible with senior customer, distributor, broker, and operator stakeholders.
- A builder of people, teams, systems, and accountability.
- Decisive, data-informed, and comfortable operating in a fast-paced, evolving environment.
- Collaborative and effective at influencing across functions without relying solely on formal authority.
- Persistent, solutions-oriented, and willing to address difficult situations directly and respectfully.
- Passionate about food, culinary quality, innovation, and helping customers succeed.
