Director Foodservice Distribution and Field

United States

40000 - 70000 a year (US Dollars)

Impossible Foods was founded to transform the global food system and reduce the impact of climate change by making the world’s most delicious, nutritious, and sustainable meat, fish, and dairy — from plants. We’re building a rockstar team of brilliant, collaborative, mission-driven individuals who take pride in using their diverse skills to contribute to saving our planet.

Want to join the movement? You can help us solve the most urgent, important challenge facing the world today (and have fun doing it).

Job Summary:

The Director of Food service Distribution and Field Sales is a key member of our North American Food service Sales team and will lead and oversee our Distribution network, Field team and Broker Network. This position requires experience in managing a team, setting distribution and “Street” strategy within the food-service industry, and overseeing the day to day activities and execution of a Field and Distribution team.

This role will report to the Vice President of North American Sales.

• Lead, manage, motivate and drive accountability for the Field and Distribution team (Region Sale Managers).
• Coach the team to drive high performance with our 400+ food service distributors (including systems distributors for our largest operators and our primary re-distributor Dot Foods), our broker network, and key regional accounts.
• Drive objectives, goals, strategy and plans for the Field and Distribution segment in the US and Canada.
• Manage our Broker partnerships - Hold accountability through pipeline management, business reviews and making appropriate market changes when goals are not being met.
• Own and Manage distributor HQ’s; ensure team is properly local managing distributor and regional Distributor relationships; develop influential relationships with our key distributor partners; manage business reviews, traveling as needed to present business reviews and engage with leadership.
• Lead and execute the Distributor Events and strategy to ensure we are getting maximum exposure and ROI.
• Establish and measure national and local distributor KPIs and metrics - report on distributor progress (including wins, gaps, and non-performance) in critical sales meetings.
• Oversee all day-to-day activities with our distributors (including, but not limited to: payment disputes, out-of-stocks, new vendor set-up forms, new sku launches, and product/price changes).
• Lead distributor trade and Opex spend strategy and manage budget, oversee distributor trade spend ROI, and recommend adjustments to distributor trade as needed.
• Oversee and manage the team’s trade and marketing activities (such as shows, trainings, cuttings).
• Oversee a pipeline of direct sales activities to regional chains; coach team to achieve direct sales goals for both new and existing skus.
• Act as the key senior liaison between IF internal stakeholders and the Field and Distribution team, providing a data-driven and informed perspective.
• Ability to Travel within the US/Canada ~50%.

• 15+ years of food service sales experience, with specific experience managing food service brokers and distributor HQs.
• At least 10+ years managing and leading a team of direct sales reports.
• Experience managing trade and Opex budgets.
• A genuine interest and passion for Impossible Food's mission.
• The ability to think creatively and critically, can quickly learn new concepts and seeks to resolve complex problems.
• The ability to be a structured and organized thinker who can drive projects to completion with minimal direction; attention to detail and ability to deep-dive when necessary.
• A growth mindset - you are curious, seek help from others, openly accept feedback, and capitalize on setbacks to move forward more effectively.
• A bias towards action - you have an entrepreneurial mindset, can make and own decisions, and you adopt our “Blast Ahead” mentality of grit, action, and perseverance.
• Highly collaborative approach with ability to collaborate with all types of functions (R&D, Mar Comms, Finance, Strategy, Operations, etc.).
• A servant…