Brand Manager, Innovation

ABOUT NATURE’S BAKERY

Nature's Bakery believes that simple, wholesome snacks are the best fuel for active, joyful lives. Founded in 2011, Nature’s Bakery was built on a promise to always deliver snacks that you can feel good about AND that taste great. We bake our own bars with recipes that prioritize real, simple, and ingredients like hearty whole grains and fruit to create soft-baked snacks that are plant-based, nut-free, dairy-free, and 100% Non-GMO Project Verified. We are best known for our whole wheat Fig Bars but are continuously innovating with Gluten Free Fig Bars, Oatmeal Crumble Bars, Double Chocolate Brownie Bars and more!

Today, we are one of the fastest growing snack brands in the category and have recently joined the Mars family of companies to accelerate the growth of our snacking platform. We have a bright future ahead of us. Come bake with us and create a world of snacking that is both good, and good for you.

JOB DESCRIPTION

The Innovation & Renovation (I&R) Manager, Brand is responsible for managing and executing the Nature’s Bakery innovation & renovation pipeline. Reporting to the Director of Brand Marketing & Portfolio Strategy, this highly strategic and analytical role will develop strategic product concepts and renovation opportunities championing them through launch via the stage gate process.

Primary Responsibilities

• Identify, develop, evaluate and recommend product concepts that will drive profitable and incremental growth for the brand

• Manage the 0 – 3-year I&R pipeline, working closely with Brand, R&D, Project Management, Sales, and Finance to ensure the products are hitting targets from concept to commercialization.

• Partner with R&D to identify formulations that will set Nature’s Bakery apart as an industry and category leader in snacking.

• Provide ongoing forward-looking business outlook and category insights as part business planning activities

• Be the internal expert in the snack bar and snack category through analyses, trends, insights, and knowledge of category dynamics and competition.

• Be a consumer insights champion, leading ongoing consumer and market research studies—and disseminating knowledge across organization

• Develop innovation performance reporting on an ongoing and ad-hoc basis, highlighting key trends and opportunities.

• Partner with Base Business team to ensure a cohesive innovation pipeline across flavor line extensions, new benefits, and new formats.

• Manage and develop an Associate Brand Manager.

Qualifications

The ideal candidate is an experienced Innovation Manager who has an authentic passion for innovation, brand, new products, and analytics with experience working in an entrepreneurial, high-growth CPG environment.

Ideal Qualifications:

• 4-6 years of relevant Innovation & Product Management experience

• Previous experience as a product manager in CPG

• Curious about consumers’ needs, trends in snacking and the future of food

• Proven analytical capability pulling and deriving insights from data, must be fluent with IRI/Nielsen

• Draws connections between facts, ideas and situations and makes strong recommendations

• Strong financial acumen, including P&L understanding

• BA/BS minimum, MBA preferred

• Excellent oral, verbal, and written communication skills

• Fluent in MSOffice tools and able to quickly get up to speed with business intelligence systems.

Other Qualifications:

• Collaborator: Enjoy working across functions in a highly collaborative manner

• Highly Analytical: Strong knowledge of marketplace data sources (IRI, Nielsen, Numerator), tracking and reporting processes, yet just as comfortable using soft data (intuition) to make decisions

• Results-Oriented: Proven ability to deliver KPIs, plans and new items on time.

• Consumer Centric: Brings a strong consumer-first perspective, grounding strategies and solutions in consumer insights.

Your Career Journey at Nature’s Bakery

As a young company, we have had the opportunity to shape, reinforce and live our five core company values daily:

• Growth Minded. You are incessantly curious, you believe career development is journey built on experiences, feedback, and personal growth

• Solutions-Focused. You excel at both thinking and doing and have a track record of turning organizational objectives into actionable solutions

• You thrive in environments where team members treat each other with respect and support one another, in fact you believe the best solutions emerge when you can engage in fact-based, low-ego discussions

• Stronger Together. Working as a team towards a common goal, we thrive on collaboration because we believe each of us has a unique perspective to offer

• “Doing the right thing” guides you, it is the compass that guides every decision and action you take

What we offer you

Our team members' physical and mental health is important to a thriving workplace. That’s why we offer the following benefits to full-time employees:

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance offered for eligible employees

• 401(k) plan with a company match that vest on day 1 of eligibility

• Paid vacation

• Paid time off

• Holiday pay (11 days)

• Paid short-term disability

• Paid life insurance

• Banfield Pet Insurance Discounts

• Wellness Benefits and Discounts

• Employee Assistance Program

EEO

We are committed to an inclusive workplace where diversity in all its forms is championed. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and we are an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status.

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