National Account Manager - New Business

Job Details:

Job Location:

Lynn Plant - Lynn, MA, Salary Range: $120000.00 - $150000.00

Salary, National Accounts Manager
- New Business

Kettle Cuisine is seeking an experienced, driven, and highly connected new-business hunter to lead the next phase of national-account growth. This individual contributor will identify and build relationships with high-potential national and multi-unit food service operators—including quick-service, fast-casual, casual-dining, pizza, deli/café, and emerging restaurant concepts—and convert those relationships into qualified opportunities, customer trials, and long-term partnerships.

The ideal candidate is energized by opening doors, understanding operator needs, and bringing the right internal resources together to create differentiated menu solutions. Working closely with Marketing, Culinary, R&D, Operations, Supply Chain, Quality, Finance, Customer Service, and broker partners, this role will develop custom offerings that solve customer challenges, reflect consumer and menu trends, and delight the end consumer.

• Build and manage a targeted prospect list of national and multi-unit restaurant and food service operators aligned with Kettle Cuisine’s growth priorities.
• Create new connections with executive, culinary, procurement, operations, and supply-chain decision-makers through strategic outreach, industry relationships, referrals, brokers, and trade shows.
• Develop and execute account-entry strategies that move prospects from initial connection through discovery, ideation, sampling, commercialization, and launch.
• Lead discovery conversations to understand menu strategy, consumer needs, operational constraints, sourcing priorities, and whitespace opportunities.
• Build a measurable pipeline of qualified opportunities, maintain accurate CRM activity and next steps, and deliver reliable forecasts aligned with growth targets.
• Represent Kettle Cuisine’s branded and custom capabilities—including culinary-led development, small-batch craftsmanship at scale, flexible manufacturing, and customer-specific solutions—to prospective operators.

• Partner with customers and Kettle Cuisine’s Marketing and Culinary teams to translate consumer insights, menu trends, and operator needs into compelling concepts.
• Develop best-in-class custom menu offerings that differentiate the customer, simplify execution, and deliver an exceptional consumer experience.
• Leverage internal Culinary, R&D, and Marketing resources to create customer-ready concepts, presentations, prototypes, samples, and commercialization plans.
• Support the development of custom soups, sauces, broths, sides, mac and cheese, sous vide items, and other kettle-crafted offerings that showcase Kettle Cuisine’s full capability set.
• Monitor key food service, consumer, ingredient, packaging, and competitive trends and convert relevant insights into prospecting priorities and customer ideas.
• Bring the voice of the customer back to the organization to influence innovation priorities, product development, and commercial strategy.

• Work closely with Marketing, Culinary, R&D, Operations, Supply Chain, Quality, Finance, and Customer Service to ensure a coordinated customer-development process.
• Coordinate customer ideation sessions, sample reviews, plant visits, trials, and presentations with clear objectives and documented next steps.
• Partner with broker and chain-sales resources to expand reach, increase access to target operators, and accelerate qualified introductions.

• 7+ years of progressive food service sales, business development, or national-account experience, with a demonstrated record of opening new accounts…