R&D Chef

RUPRECHT CO•Mundelein, IL

About The Position

Provide research driven innovation of raw value-added proteins and fully cooked sous vide products that align with Kilcoy Global Foods vision for unparallel high quality growth and excellence within the food industry.

Requirements

Bachelor’s Degree in Culinary Arts with concentration in food science / R&D preferred
1 to 3 years R&D Chef Experience
Must be Proficient in MS Office Suite with intermediate
Strong written and verbal communication skills
Proven ability to interact with teammates in a professional manner, including under stressful situations
Proven ability to problem solve and organize a large volume of information in a fast moving, dynamic environment
Ability to work independently as well as part of a team

Nice To Haves

Experience with Sous Vide cooked proteins is a plus
Proficiency in Microsoft Office Products
Candidates should be self-starters with a strong work ethic and the ability to prioritize their workload to ensure timely issue resolution.
Communication and Presence: Effectively conveys information and expresses thoughts and facts to a diverse audience of both internal and external stakeholders. Demonstrates effective use of listening skills and displays openness to other’s ideas and thoughts. Can lead large-scale presentations and discussions as well as collaborative working sessions.
Customer and Personal Service: Knowledge of principles and processes for providing customer and personal services. This includes customer needs assessment, meeting quality standards for services, and evaluation of customer satisfaction.
Kitchen Management Experience: Must have knowledge/experience of variety of commercial cooking equipment (including cleaning and maintenance).
Analytical Thinking: Must be able to identify and define problems, extract key information from data and develop workable solutions for the problems identified to test and verify the cause of the problem. Develop solutions to resolve the problems identified.
Organization: Organize and prioritize your own actions efficiently. Be flexible and react favorably to multiple priorities, changing schedules and daily assignments while paying attention to detail.

Responsibilities

Participate & contribute to cross-functional teams to drive new product innovation
Identify gaps in our portfolio through competitive analysis of our categories
Comparison shop and perform competitive product analysis
Create and execute trend innovation ideas and formulas for foodservice and retail channels
Coordinate multiple concurrent product development projects (raw value-added protein and fully cooked sous vide items) from bench top testing to production commercialization
Manage new product development projects and assist in setting specifications to include sourcing/qualifying ingredients, establishing equipment requirements, determining manufacturing processes for new products
Assist operations/production in new product scale ups
Performance test developed products based on use case
Provide new product specifications to Regulatory, Sales, QA and Purchasing
Develop and validate cooking & reheat instructions for retail packaging and applicable foodservice items
Process, schedule, produce, inventory and ship product samples (Labeling, FedEx, etc.)
Organize ingredient inventory and request necessary ingredients for development projects
Manage and execute production sample evaluations and document results
Prepare food for in-house evaluations including shelf-life studies
Culinary expert for internal and external events (trade shows, sales calls, etc.)
Prepare and serve food for customer presentations
Provide technical support services to sales team. Overnight travel may be necessary
Expert knowledge of industrial sous vide cooking including robust understanding of CCP’s combined with the sensory objective and the ability to program our cooking apparatuses accordingly
Know, adhere to and enforce all GMP’s
Performs other duties as assigned