Summary
Are you obsessed with making nutritious & delicious whole food vegan meals for your family, friends, community, and country?
Are you creative, and is working with healthy food every day your happy-place?
Are you high energy, proactive, organized, curious, self-motivated, and looking to accelerate your career within a fast-paced mission-driven organization?
What if you could make a real difference, every day, for people’s health, animals, and the planet — working with a passionate vegan team?
You certainly can, at LeafSide! We are a growing company, offering innovative 100% whole-food plant-based (WFPB) vegan meals at the healthiest standard (Dr. Greger’s evidence-based Daily Dozen). Our mission is to make optimally healthy, whole vegan eating so easy and enjoyable, that it becomes a societal norm.
As our team’s Product & Recipe Developer, you’ll lead and raise our products and offerings to the next level in quality and nutrition — continually improving, revising, and creating meals. You’ll start with (freeze) dried ingredients and combine them in bold ways where no chef has gone before, while using your ever-growing digital skills to organize your work.
We’re looking for a leader who can drive better and new products, to help our customers become the healthiest version of themselves, easily and enjoyably. Someone mission-driven, highly-organized, uncannily resourceful, amazingly adaptable, crystal-clear communicating, and a get-it-done fellow vegan — to join us in our Tempe, AZ office.
It’ll all be happening in the fast-paced environment of a growing, mission-driven company — so we’re looking for someone who will see this role as not just another job, but their life’s calling.
Responsibilities & Tasks
Product Development
- Improve, revise, and create recipes for nutritious, delicious, shelf stable, portable WFPB vegan meals
- Ensure all recipes meet company parameters for convenience, nutrition, and costs
- Train & manage the Product Development team, including performance reviews
- Oversee product testing process
- Prepare product samples for taste testers
- Design product photo layouts and manage sessions with professional photographer
- Communicate & coordinate with Marketing
- Review customer feedback and coordinate with Customer Success as needed
- Contribute positively to company culture by exemplifying a WFPB lifestyle
Research
- Source suppliers of high quality ingredients
- Complete special projects as required
- Stay up-to-date with nutrition science (whole food plant based, lifestyle medicine), food industry trends, and emerging technologies in food science.
Documentation
- Be proficient with spreadsheets, project management, and other IT tools
- Create and update Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)
- Communicate and coordinate regularly via internal communication systems
Desired Candidate Attributes & Experience
- Culinary Skills: 7+ years professional vegan/WFPB chef experience, or equivalent. Ideally your cooking has wowed and convinced others to go vegan! And you’ve taken courses, won competitions, cooked often for others, and have other chef accolades on your wall. Bonus if you’re well traveled and at least familiar with many international cuisines & flavor combinations.
- You have working WFPB/vegan nutrition knowledge. You’ve read science-heavy nutrition books like “How Not To Die” and “Becoming Vegan” on your own, and you can readily communicate about the major ideas there. Additional nutrition/culinary education and experience are very helpful.
- Bonus, Natural and organic products industry experience: You’ve worked in the natural/organic products (e.g. CPG, retail) industry at a professional, managerial, and/or executive level.
- Bonus, Food Science / Chemistry background, skills, and/or keen interest.
- Communication Skills: You have excellent verbal and written communication skills, and strong listening and organizational skills with proven attention to detail. Ideally, you can quickly understand high-level goals, plan your work, and get great results - with very little oversight, and then present your findings concisely and convincingly to the team.
- Research Skills: You know how to start with a (big) question or goal, and quickly dive into a topic to get relevant and convincing results. You’re highly proficient with using search engines, papers, books, etc. for research, and able to solve many or most technology questions and issues independently. You’re also able to find and reach out to credible experts to get key information.
- Information Organization and Presentation Skills: You’re able to effectively organize large amounts of data and information into clearly understandable formats, such as spreadsheets & documents.
- Project Management Skills: You’re an independent worker with demonstrated flexibility to adapt to changes, and handle multiple competing demands. As mentioned, once you understand the goals you should manage yourself on multiple tasks and projects, and deliver high quality results in a timely manner, in a fast-paced and evolving environment.
- Strong Interpersonal Skills: Adjectives that apply to you include personable, enthusiastic, cooperative, diplomatic, energetic, flexible, and trustworthy.
- You’re a Learner with the Growth Mindset: Self-motivated learning and improving, and coachability, are all part of LeafSide’s core values.
- You’re absolutely passionate about LeafSide’s mission, and committed to being a stellar example to others by living the vegan/WFPB lifestyle.
Salary & Benefits
- This is a full-time on-site role, 40-50 hours/week. To succeed in this role, hard work, reliability, people skills, and obsession with food and nutrition should be your strong suits. Career success and mission impact should be top priorities in your life.
- We offer market-competitive compensation commensurate with experience. This role has a wide range of possible success and impact, and the starting compensation package is open to discussion, per your experience and career track-record. For candidates whose background is chef or food centric, the applicable roles for salary expectations is similar to an Executive Chef or Recipe Developer (please note that our work environment is much quieter and calmer than a busy large restaurant kitchen). For candidates who are strong chefs and also have aligned professional/executive experience in natural products, CPG, etc salary and role expectations can be shared after your completed application, thanks!
- Total time off per year starts at 5 weeks per year. (8 paid holidays, 5 sick days, and 12 PTO days) with sick and PTO time usable interchangeably, accumulating year-to-year, and accrued per fully employed pay period.
- Health, dental, vision, and life insurance plans are offered, with full or partial coverage by the company depending on the plan chosen.
- Complimentary LeafSide meals every workday (a $2,500+ yearly value), and employee discount on LeafSide products. Unlike most food companies, we eat our own products every day, and high quality food drives us to perform our best!
Here’s what our customers say about us:
“In one week of eating LeafSide meals, I lost 9 pounds, was pain-free, had more energy and mental clarity. In fact, it was so amazing that I’ve decided that I’m going to make their meals a cornerstone of my healthy, new, plant-based diet lifestyle. With these meals, all I have to do is heat the water up in my little 12 Volt portable kettle and pour the hot water into the bowl with the meal. Presto! I have a healthy, plant-based, organic meal! Love, love, love LeafSide!!!” - Kelley
Job Type: Full-time
Benefits:
- Dental insurance
- Employee discount
- Health insurance
- Paid time off
- Vision insurance
Schedule:
- 8 hour shift
- Monday to Friday
Application Question(s):
- Please upload a cover letter (required) as a PDF file. In your cover letter, address the following:
1. Why are you passionate about promoting a whole food plant-based lifestyle?
2. How can your skills and experiences help advance LeafSide’s mission to make vegan eating a societal norm?
3. What is the range of compensation you are considering in your current job search?
IMPORTANT: Your application will not be considered without a completed cover letter addressing all the above points.
Education:
Language:
Ability to Relocate:
- Tempe, AZ 85283: Relocate before starting work (Required)
Work Location: In person