About this role
Your Contribution and Responsibilities
Execution
• Lead and oversee daily production, warehouse, fulfillment, and quality execution.
• Translate production plans and operational priorities into clear daily assignments, workflows, and expectations for the factory team.
• Maintain an active and visible presence on the production and warehouse floors, identifying issues, coaching execution, removing obstacles, and ensuring standards are consistently met.
• Ensure ice cream and other products are produced according to documented recipes, quality specifications, target yields, food safety requirements, and production standards.
• Coordinate the movement of ingredients, packaging, finished goods, and supplies through production and warehouse operations.
• Oversee receiving, storage, organization, staging, transfers, order fulfillment, and outbound distribution preparation.
• Ensure shop orders are accurately prepared, fulfilled, and ready according to established schedules.
• Ensure ingredients, packaging, and finished products are properly labeled, rotated, stored, handled, and protected throughout the operation.
• Monitor production pace, labor deployment, workflow, equipment utilization, bottlenecks, downtime, and quality performance, making real-time adjustments to improve execution.
• Anticipate operational needs, identify problems early, and take ownership of resolving issues before they disrupt production, quality, or fulfillment.
• Maintain factory cleanliness, organization, sanitation, food safety, and operational readiness.
• Coordinate with the Factory Manager on staffing, production priorities, inventory needs, equipment issues, quality concerns, and operational challenges.
• Support internal order creation, inventory transactions, purchasing execution, production documentation, quality records, and other administrative tasks necessary to support factory operations.
• Assume responsibility for day-to-day factory operations in the Factory Manager’s absence, within established authority and escalation guidelines.
Quality Assurance & Food Safety
• Own day-to-day execution of factory quality assurance standards and help develop a culture where quality is built into every production process rather than inspected only at the end.
• Develop, document, implement, and continuously improve quality control procedures for ingredients, production processes, finished products, storage, and fulfillment.
• Establish and uphold clearly defined product quality standards, including recipe adherence, flavor, texture, appearance, weight/yield, packaging, labeling, storage, and other applicable specifications.
• Conduct and oversee routine quality checks throughout production and ensure deviations are identified, documented, investigated, and corrected.
• Identify root causes of recurring quality issues and implement corrective and preventive actions.
• Maintain appropriate QA/QC documentation and ensure records are complete, accurate, and consistently maintained.
• Partner with the Factory Manager and company leadership on food safety programs, inspections, audits, regulatory compliance, and corrective actions.
• Ensure adherence to sanitation, allergen control, temperature control, traceability, recall readiness, and other established food safety practices.
• Train and coach employees to understand that product quality and food safety are individual responsibilities at every stage of production.
• Evaluate new products, equipment, processes, and operational changes for potential quality and food safety risks before implementation.
• Protect Sweet Cow product standards while pursuing operational efficiency—ensuring productivity improvements never compromise quality or food safety.
Operational Excellence & Continuous Improvement
• Continuously evaluate production, warehouse, and fulfillment workflows to identify opportunities to improve safety, quality, productivity, consistency, and efficiency.
• Design, test, implement, and refine operational processes that reduce unnecessary movement, waiting, rework, errors, waste, and variability.
• Develop and maintain clear SOPs, work instructions, checklists, production standards, and training materials.
• Ensure SOPs reflect actual best practices on the floor, are understood by employees, are consistently followed, and are updated as operations evolve.
• Establish repeatable workflows and clearly defined standards that enable factory operations to scale as Sweet Cow grows.
• Identify operational bottlenecks and constraints and develop practical solutions in partnership with the Factory Manager.
• Evaluate workspace layout, staging, material flow, production sequencing, equipment utilization, and labor deployment to improve operational efficiency.
• Support testing, validation, and implementation of new equipment, production methods, processes, and products.
• Use practical operational measures—including production output, yields, labor utilization, waste, quality issues, fulfillment accuracy, downtime, and inventory discrepancies—to identify problems and validate improvements.
• Build systems that reduce dependence on individual knowledge and make successful processes teachable, repeatable, and sustainable.
Build Effective Teams
• Direct, coach, and develop production and warehouse team members to create a capable, accountable, and high-performing factory team.
• Establish clear daily priorities, responsibilities, performance expectations, and quality standards.
• Provide consistent real-time coaching, feedback, recognition, and accountability.
• Train employees on recipes, equipment, SOPs, production procedures, warehouse processes, quality standards, and food safety requirements.
• Ensure new employees are effectively onboarded, trained, and validated before independently performing assigned responsibilities.
• Cross-train team members to create operational flexibility, improve bench strength, and reduce dependency on individual employees.
• Identify skill and performance gaps and partner with the Factory Manager to develop appropriate coaching, training, and development plans.
• Foster a positive, solution-oriented environment grounded in Sweet Cow’s values of community, kindness, contribution, and growth.
• Lead through presence, example, consistency, clear expectations, and accountability.
Focus on Customers and Community
• Ensure factory operations consistently support the quality and availability of products our shops and customers expect.
• Protect the Sweet Cow product experience through disciplined production, quality assurance, storage, handling, and fulfillment practices.
• Ensure shops receive complete, accurate, high-quality, and timely orders.
• Respond constructively to shop feedback and use recurring issues as opportunities to improve factory processes and product quality.
• Uphold Sweet Cow’s commitment to exceptional product quality, cleanliness, reliability, and hospitality through excellent behind-the-scenes execution.
Communicate with Impact
• Maintain clear, direct, respectful, and timely communication with the Factory Manager and factory team.
• Conduct effective daily communication around production priorities, staffing, workflow, fulfillment, quality, and operational concerns.
• Communicate production delays, shortages, quality deviations, equipment concerns, staffing challenges, and other risks proactively.
• Partner effectively with Shop Leadership, Facilities, Supply Chain, and company leadership when factory execution requires cross-functional coordination.
• Escalate issues appropriately while bringing proposed solutions and recommendations whenever possible.
• Document important operational changes, SOPs, quality expectations, corrective actions, and follow-up clearly.
• Provide the Factory Manager with regular updates on operational performance, recurring issues, quality trends, improvement initiatives, and team development.
Core Operational Competencies
• Production Leadership: Ability to organize and oversee production while maintaining recipe, quality, yield, safety, and schedule expectations.
• Quality Assurance: Ability to establish quality standards, identify deviations, investigate root causes, implement corrective actions, and create systems that consistently produce high-quality products.
• Food Safety & Compliance: Strong working knowledge of sanitation, allergen controls, food handling, preventive controls, documentation, and applicable food manufacturing standards.
• Warehouse Operations: Ability to oversee receiving, storage, organization, inventory movement, staging, transfers, and fulfillment.
• Continuous Improvement: Ability to observe operations, identify inefficiencies and bottlenecks, determine root causes, test solutions, and implement sustainable improvements.
• SOP Development: Ability to translate successful operational practices into clear, practical, repeatable written procedures and training standards.
• People Leadership: Ability to set expectations, delegate work, coach performance, provide feedback, resolve issues, and hold team members accountable.
• Planning & Prioritization: Ability to translate broader production requirements into effective daily execution and adjust priorities as conditions change.
• Problem Solving Under Pressure: Ability to respond calmly and decisively to staffing, equipment, product, inventory, quality, and workflow disruptions.
• Operational Technology: Ability to competently use the systems required for production, inventory, ordering, fulfillment, purchasing, quality documentation, and operational communication.
• Communication: Ability to communicate clearly across teams, identify risks early, and bring well-developed solutions and recommendations.
Compensation
• $65,000 - $75,000/year
Benefits
• Health insurance benefits (50% employer paid)
• Company Wellness Contribution of $1,200 annually ($600 twice a year)
• 401(K) Plan with a 4% employer match
• Dental Plan (Employee Paid)
• Vision Plan (Employee Paid)
Paid Time Off
• Paid Vacation + Additional Paid Sick Leave
• Paid Holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas)
Salary: $65,000-$75,000, Benefits Include: 3 weeks+ PTO/paid holidays increasing with tenure, 50% employer-paid health benefits and 401K with 4% employer match.