Customer Success Manager

Ventura Foods; Irvine (CA); On-site; USD 109,000 - 172,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Dental, Vision

401(k) matching

Paid Vacation and Holidays

Employee Appreciation Events

Salary transparency

Job summary

Ventura Foods is seeking a Customer Success Manager in Irvine, CA to lead innovation services for assigned customers. You will partner with Culinary, Product Development, Marketing, and Sales to deliver customer-ready solutions that align with market trends and growth opportunities.

You will manage accounts, synthesize data-driven insights, and guide projects from ideation through execution, sustaining strong relationships and ensuring operational feasibility in a fast-paced, matrixed

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Marketing, Communications, or related field.
• 3+ years in innovation, marketing, customer marketing, category management or sales with innovation project experience.
• Experience with customer facing activity and engagement.
• Willingness to travel up to 25%.
• MBA is a plus.
• PMP certification would be good to have.

Responsibilities

• Innovation service delivery with cross-functional partners to identify trends and deliver customer-ready solutions.
• Act as primary innovation contact for assigned customer accounts and build strategic relationships.
• Guide customer opportunities from idea to reality with product development, marketing and sales teams.
• Communicate insights and recommendations clearly to resonate with customers and inspire action.
• Collaborate across Culinary, Product Development, Marketing, and Sales to meet customer needs.
• Promote a culture of creativity and continuous improvement within the team.

Skills

Interpersonal skills

Verbal communication

Written communication

Presentation skills

Project management

Microsoft Office

Analytical skills

Remote collaboration

Food industry interest

Time management

Education

Bachelor's degree in Business/Marketing/Communications

3+ years in innovation/marketing with project experience

MBA (plus)

PMP certification (would be good)

Tools

Microsoft Office

Job description

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Customer Success Manager

Location: Irvine, CA, US, 92618

Position Summary:

As the Manager of Customer Success, you will play a strategic role in helping customers discover what's next in food and supporting them along their Food Innovation journey. Our Customer Success managers work at the intersection of consumer trends, culinary innovation, product development and commercialization. You'll help our customers bring new ideas to life - from identifying growth opportunities to supporting the development of innovative menu solutions. You'll collaborate with chefs, marketers, researchers, product development, supply chain and sales teams to turn insights into action and create meaningful business impact for our customers.

Major Duties and Responsibilities:

• Innovation Service Delivery: Delivers Ventura Foods' innovation services with consistency, excellence and impact. Partners with Culinary, Product Development, Marketing and Sales teams to identify emerging food trends, develop innovation concepts and deliver customer-ready solutions to drive growth. Creates experiences, supports brainstorms and ideations, which brings the message of food innovation and manufacturing expertise to life in innovative, memorable ways.
• Customer Account Management: Acts as the primary innovation contact for assigned customer accounts. Builds and maintains strong customer partnerships, increases strategic relationships with the key customers through proactive & regular innovation content. Blends analytical skills and confidence working with consumer and industry data sources with a natural curiosity within the food and innovation space. Enjoys working to uncover relevant consumer data that supports customer needs and discovers new opportunities and presents those opportunities in compelling ways.
• Project Management: Develops a strong understanding of product design, commercialization and the end-to-end innovation process to effectively guide customer opportunities from idea to reality. Works closely with Product Development, Culinary, Marketing and Sales teams to understand what it takes to successfully develop, launch and scale innovative solutions. Serves as an advocate for customer innovation projects, ensures concepts presented externally are grounded in operational feasibility and positioned for successful execution. Drives alignment, tracks project progress and helps transform insights into ideas and real-world outcomes.
• Communication Skills : Delivers food innovation, consumer and menu trends content aligned with an annual calendar, provides value-added and impactful insights to a broad customer base. Can synthesize insights from multiple sources into clear, compelling and actionable recommendations that resonate with customers and inspire action. Demonstrates exceptional written, verbal and presentation skills with the ability to craft impactful narratives.
• Cultural Fit: Contributes in promoting a culture of creativity and continuous improvement. Builds trusted relationships with customers. Collaborate across functions (Culinary, Product Development, Category Marketing, Research, Digital Marketing, Commercialization and Sales) to deliver against the customer needs. Works in a team environment, able to proactively bring stakeholders and cross-functional partners along.

Education and Experience:

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Marketing, Communications, or a related field, is required.
• 3+ years of experience in innovation, marketing, customer marketing, category management or sales with innovation project experience, is required.
• Experience with customer facing activity and engagement, is required.
• Ability to travel up to 25%.
• MBA is a plus.
• Experience working with national chain accounts, regional chain accounts, distributors, or food service operators is a bonus.
• Background in channel or insights driven marketing is nice to have.
• PMP certification would be good to have.

Knowledge and Skills:

• Strong interpersonal, verbal, written and presentation communication skills, along with relationship-building abilities.
• Strong planning and organization, project management and time management skills.
• Loves food, demonstrated interest in foodservice, restaurant and/or retail product innovation.
• Must be proficient with Microsoft Office applications.
• Comfortable working in fast paced, highly matrixed organizations.
• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills.
• Ability to work collaboratively in a remote environment.

Why Join Us:

Ventura Foods innovates and manufactures food solutions for foodservice and retail businesses. We make exclusive products for the world's most iconic restaurants and retailers, we provideready-to-goproduct solutions for professional kitchens, and we make consumer brands everyone knows and loves. When you work for Ventura Foods, you get a strong foundation of training, a manager who cares about you and celebrates your success, a safe environment, and challenging work. As part of our team, your future is limited only by how much you’re willing to push yourself to get there. We invest in your growth because you invest in ours.

Ventura Foods offers career growth opportunities as well as competitive compensation and benefits:

• Medical, Prescription, Dental, & Vision – coverage beginning on your 1st day for eligible employees
• Profit Sharing and 401(k) matching (after eligible criteria is met)
• Paid Vacation, Sick Time, and Holidays
• Employee Appreciation Events and Employee Assistance Programs
• Salary Base Range of$109,060.95-$171,773.09*
• Annual bonus (based on the incentive program terms and conditions)

*The “base salary range” provided above is a good faith estimate of what we expect to pay for this position in the specified markets. Ventura Foods reserves the right to pay outside of the given range based on a variety of factors including but not limited to: candidate skills and experience, complexity of the job, budgetary factors, and location/geography. Ventura Foods conducts regular reviews of compensation ranges and therefore reserves the right to alter this range at any given time.

Our Culture
Our Culture reflects our commitment to treating every employee with respect and creating an environment where people can do their best work. We rely on a variety of strengths, backgrounds, and experiences across our teams to help us innovate, grow, and deliver for our customers. By fostering a workplace that is supportive, collaborative, and grounded in integrity, we continue to attract strong talent and meet the high expectations of a rapidly evolving marketplace.

Ventura Foods is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law.

Ventura Foods may use Artificial Intelligence (AI) assisted tools at certain stages of our hiring process, including identifying & sourcing candidates, reviewing applications and matched candidates on job boards and websites, and generating screening questions to help us work more efficiently and consistently. We regularly review our tools to promote fairness and reduce the risk of bias. However, while these tools support our process, every hiring decision is made by a real person on our team. Applicants in the State of New York may request an alternative process by contacting us at [e-mail] .

Nearest Major Market: Irvine California
Nearest Secondary Market: Los Angeles