Job Details

Job Location: Lynn Plant - Lynn, MA

Salary Range: $200000.00 - $260000.00

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.

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.
• Team leadership and organizational performance: Lead, coach, and develop a team of seven to eight regional managers and directors responsible for foodservice market execution.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

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.