Welcome to Gordon Food Service! We are excited that you are thinking about opportunities with us, and we have an amazing story to share. See below for a quick glance of who we are and the impact you could have on the food service industry. There's a seat at our table for you...

Position Summary:

Responsible for defining solutions that are viable, feasible and exceed customer expectations. Uses customer insights, feedback and market trends to craft the vision and product strategy. Tasked with prioritizing features and enhancements, creating detailed product roadmaps, and managing the product lifecycle from concept to launch and beyond. Engage with customers regularly to gather actionable feedback, ensuring that the product continues to evolve in ways that deliver maximum value. Collaborate with stakeholders across the organization to ensure seamless communication and alignment on product vision and objectives. Adept at balancing strategic thinking with hands-on execution, making data-driven decisions to drive product success and achieve business growth. The position will also manage and develop a team of Product Owners.

Essential Functions:

Analyze Market Trends and Customer Needs

Gathers feedback  for product requirements,  researches  current and emerging industry trends trends and capabilities to help inform product strategy.

Understands market segments and end user needs to ensure solutions delivers maximum benefits.

Identifies and supports running experiments to learn and then influence the next steps.

Product Strategy & Vision

Develops and refines the vision, roadmap, and features that align to the organizational strategy and business outcomes by understanding customers, competitors and potential disruptors, industry trends, solution/product use, and solution/product performance.

Clearly communicates the vision, roadmap, features, priorities, and desired outcomes to ensure alignment. 

Reviews and adjusts roadmap as new learnings emerge and strategies shift.

Defining and Prioritizing 

Uses lean and agile principles and practices to decompose large solutions into features that provide incremental value. Defines a successive set of minimal viable products that test assumptions and translate learning into actions. 

Negotiates with stakeholders about scope, priorities, and potential approaches.

Collects, analyzes, and uses data to drive decisions related to features and priorities.  

Makes and/or facilitates decisions to rollout strategies and  go-to-market timing, change management activities and marketing.

Provides feedback to teams as they are building solutions/products to ensure building the desired outcomes.

Product Lifecycle Management

Oversee the entire product lifecycle from concept to launch and beyond.

Ensure that the product evolves to meet changing market demands and customer expectations.

Value Delivery and Benefits Realization 

Focus on delivering tangible value to customers with each product release, ensuring that features and improvements directly address customer needs and enhance user experience.

Measure and track the benefits realized from product initiatives to ensure they contribute to business objectives and provide a strong return on investment.

Analyze data to identify potential areas for product innovation and improvement.

Collaboration

Collaborates with peers, stakeholders, and cross functional teams to guide and deliver value to customers. 

Builds an energetic, engaged, and effective team of product owners who will collaborate to deliver value to customers.

Owns relationship with 3rd party applications/vendors. Critical advocate of GFS business needs, understand the third party roadmap and influences it.

When necessary involved with contract management (monitor contract dates, adapt license needs, google alert for security related issues) and looping in legal and finance.

Leads and contributes to communication, marketing, and training activities to support adoption and use of solution/products.

Manage and develop a team of Product Owners.

Interviews, hires, trains, and retains staff. Conducts performance monitoring of staff, initiating follow through with disciplinary action and termination in consultation with human resources when appropriate for the department. Mentors, motivates, and develops staff and acts as a role model and resource to them.

Leads and directs the work of others.

Performs other duties as assigned.

Knowledge / Skills / Abilities:

Establish and maintain trusting relationships with diverse stakeholders inside and outside the company.

Excellent listening and communication skills, both written and verbal.

Comfortable speaking to large groups (over 100 people) and effectively telling stories to explain the vision and context of work.

Accept and learn from experiments that do not return expected results.

Encourage idea proposals, experimentation, and active problem-solving contributions from others.

Ability to create graphs, models, and visuals to illustrate work and impact of outcomes.

Assertive in maintaining vision, work-in-progress limits, priorities, and other needs by saying “no” when necessary.

Respond effectively to changes in a dynamic business environment and handle various degrees of ambiguity.

Influence and negotiate honestly with others to achieve desired outcomes.

Skilled in facilitation and fostering strong relationships.

Capable of influencing outcomes through relationship building and effective facilitation.

Proven leader with strong coaching skills.

BE PART OF AN AMAZING CULTURE WHERE WHAT MATTERS TO YOU, MATTERS TO US!

Gordon Food Service values our customers and understands that their success is largely dependent upon their workforce. To demonstrate our commitment to our partnership, we will require any candidate who works for a Gordon Food Service customer to provide a letter of support from their management if they are selected for the interview process.

Gordon Food Service is an equal opportunity employer.

All qualified applicants and employees will receive consideration for employment, or in terms or conditions of employment, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, status as a protected veteran, or status as a qualified individual with disability. The EEO is the Law poster is available here: http://www.dol.gov/ofccp/regs/compliance/posters/pdf/eeopost.pdf. If you require reasonable accommodation for any part of the application or hiring process due to a disability, please submit your request to talent@gfs.com and use the words “Accommodation Request” in your subject line. Please keep in mind this method is reserved for individuals who require accommodation due to a disability.

All Gordon Food Service locations are tobacco-free.

Gordon Food Service is a drug-free workplace and drug tests all employees.