Key Account Manager - Food Service

Confidential; Dubai; On-site; AED 180,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

Confidential seeks a Key Account Manager to own strategic HORECA accounts, acting as a trusted culinary advisor and commercial owner. You will grow revenue, margin and share of wallet by combining chef-level credibility with disciplined planning and cross-functional collaboration.

Responsibilities include account planning, new business development, multi-level relationship management, and end-to-end revenue growth across beef, lamb, poultry, seafood and manufactured products.

Qualifications

• Experience owning strategic accounts and growing revenue and profitability.
• Ability to develop living account plans with menu, spend and whitespace insights.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration with chefs, procurement and operations.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain a living account plan for strategic customers with growth actions.
• Identify expansion opportunities within groups and new outlets/brands.
• Develop multi-level relationships across chefs, procurement, F&B management and ownership.
• Negotiate pricing and contracts to protect margin while securing volume.
• Maintain live pipeline and forecast data in CRM and communicate demand signals.

Skills

Account planning

Business development

Relationship management

Cross-selling

Negotiation

CRM forecasting

Product/culinary knowledge

Strategic thinking

Tools

CRM

Job description

The incumbent owns owns a portfolio of strategic HORECA customers as if they were a personal business—growing revenue, margin and share of wallet by acting as a trusted commercial and culinary advisor, not a price-driven order processor. This is explicitly not a traditional sales representative role. The Key Account Manager is the commercial owner of named strategic accounts, accountable for their growth, profitability, retention and satisfaction end-to-end, combining chef-level product credibility with disciplined commercial planning.

Job Responsibilities:

Account Planning

• Build and maintain a living account plan for every strategic customer: menu mix, current spend, whitespace opportunity, competitive exposure and growth actions.
• Prioritize accounts and time intelligently based on growth potential and profitability — not simply order size or ease of relationship.

Business Development

• Hunt for new strategic business within the assigned territory or segment, not just service existing volume.
• Identify expansion opportunities within existing groups (new outlets, new brands, new menus) as a primary growth lever.

Relationship Management

• Build multi-level relationships across chefs, procurement, F&B management and ownership — becoming the trusted advisor customers call before they call anyone else.
• Represent the voice of the customer internally, ensuring GMG's service, quality and product development respond to real operator needs.
• Understand each customer's menu, food cost structure and culinary direction well enough to propose product and cut solutions that improve their profitability, not just GMG's sell-through.
• Bring cooking-method and application knowledge (grilling, braising, sous-vide, portion control) into every menu conversation.

Cross-Selling & Upselling

• Actively introduce value-added, portioned, cooked and premium branded products into accounts historically bought on commodity protein.
• Grow penetration across the full portfolio — beef, lamb, poultry, seafood and manufactured products — rather than defending a single category.

Negotiation & Commercial Planning

• Negotiate pricing, terms and contracts that protect margin while securing long-term volume commitments.
• Build and defend the commercial rationale for every deal — understanding customer profitability, not just the company's own margin.
• Maintain accurate, live pipeline and forecast data in CRM — forecast accuracy is a core professional standard, not an administrative afterthought.
• Provide demand signals into supply chain and manufacturing planning for value-added and portioned lines.
• Track menu trends, competitor activity and emerging cuisine/format trends relevant to assigned accounts.
• Translate market intelligence into concrete account actions, not just reporting.

Customer Profitability, Product & Quality

• Understand customer-level profitability (mix, terms, service cost) and actively manage it, not just top-line revenue.
• Maintain expert-level product knowledge: cuts, grades, origin (including Brazilian Beef and Certified Angus Beef), cooking applications and shelf life.
• Own cold chain and quality standards understanding well enough to manage customer expectations and prevent avoidable complaints.

Complaint Resolution & Customer Retention

• Own resolution of quality, service or logistics complaints professionally and quickly — treating every complaint as a retention moment, not a nuisance.
• Proactively manage renewal and retention risk on strategic accounts before it becomes a lost-business event.
• Lead the introduction of new products, cuts and origins into assigned accounts, educating chefs and procurement on application and value.
• Systematically expand portfolio penetration account by account as new capacity (portioning, value-added manufacturing) comes online.

Internal Collaboration

• Work closely with logistics, quality, manufacturing and trade marketing to ensure the customer promise is delivered end-to-end.
• Escalate operational risks (cold chain, supply, quality) before they become customer-facing failures.