Reports To: Nutritional Services Manager

Direct Reports: None

Hours of Work: 7.5 Hours per day, Monday – Friday, 8:30am to 4:30pm (The role may require some additional phone support occasionally off hours to help production).

The Organization

Wholesome Kids Catering is a leading catering company with a purpose to Nourish Lives. We provide healthy, delicious, child-friendly meals, and snacks to childcare centres and schools. Our caring, experienced staff are passionate about providing great food and great service to all our customers. Tasty, child-focused menus reflect our successful ‘Eat Grow Thrive' philosophy, which combines excellent nutrition with flavors and foods children love to nourish their life. Our culture is one where we value trusted partnerships, enable growth and the ability to excel and be fully engaged, value integrity and focus on making an impact on our clients, customers, co-workers and communities.

Wholesome Kids Catering's priority for the next five years is top line growth to support the capacity in our new state of the art custom designed facility and overall strategic long-term plans. We have a proven track record in growth, and we want to deliver on “Every Child Eats” ensuring that every child has access to delicious and nutritious meals that meets their individual allergen and dietary needs, while contributing to their well-being and supporting their growth and development. The Nutritional Services Department is responsible for creating nutritious and delicious kid-friendly menus and managing the allergen management program, ensuring we are connected to food innovations, culinary insights, and trends.

As we nourish children with wholesome food to help them grow and thrive in the GTHA, we would love you to join us and become a part of our dynamic team.

Success

As a trusted partner the Menu and Allergen Specialist is responsible for project planning and managing the menu development process, successfully delivering on overall menu objectives in nutrition, menu innovation and customer satisfaction rating. The successful candidate is able to develop allergen menus to deliver on our “Every Child Eats philosophy and works with the Allergen Supervisor and Nutritional Services Manager to innovate and expand our allergen service offering. This role works intensely in managing items, boms, recipes and menu set-up in the ERP system ensuring accuracy and timeliness to changes to support operations and customer communications.

Qualifications

• Degree in Nutrition or Food Science, Registered Dietitian preferred.
• Minimum 2 years experience in menu development required.
• Minimum 2 years experience and knowledgeable in allergen management preferred.
• Minimum 2 years experience in meal preparation and/or food production planning preferred.
• Minimum 2 years experience working in a database or ERP required.
• Strong communication skills.
• Intermediate skill level in Microsoft Office Suite of products – Word, Excel, PDF, Outlook.
• Intermediate skill level in ERP system, Nutritional software, Recipe Management software.

Skills, Knowledge and Abilities

• Personable, professional and can lead a team positively with a diverse group with various levels of responsibility and accountability.
• Strong customer centric focus and service orientation
• Process assessment and orientation
• Ability to learn and leverage technology (digital native)

• Strong problem solving skills
• Attention to detail
• Self-driven, motivated and results oriented
• Works well independently and in a team
• Strong verbal and written communication in English

Duties and Responsibilities

1. Menu Development

• Lead the Menu Steering and Development Process and Team
• Creates project plans and tracks progress for all functional areas to achieve the optimum menu development process. Enhances process to predictably meet the needs of the customer (4.3 scoring menu) and the functions to enable delivery of the menu on time and in full.
• Proactively sources and assess new meals and snacks for menus in collaboration with the nutritional services, purchasing and quality assurance teams.
• Able to deliver on overall menu objectives as set out by Wholesome Leadership (targets for new items, limitations, menu score and food cost).
• Accurately recommends, reviews and approves menu substitutions.
• Prepares, updates and communications around one time and permanent menu changes.
• Helps to prepare portion and allergen guides with each new menu and helps to maintain and update the documents incorporating any changes and/or modifications.

1. Allergen Management

• Proactively sources and assesses new allergen replacements to offer kids with allergens healthy foods that best mimic the main meal.
• Ensures variety in allergen meals by mapping out replacement options.
• Be the “item” and “allergen processing” expert in Wholesome technology; understanding our customized technology processes to ensure it is being used and leveraged effectively for allergen and menu purposes. Ability to train others on these processes for support during peak volumes.
• Completes key components of daily allergen processes.
• Completes daily creation and assignments to special allergen children (dot dot children)
• Creates new allergen substitutions for the main menu in the menu development process