Culinary R&D Chef / Culinary Innovation Lead
Location: Jersey City, NJ
Job Type: Full-Time
Experience Required: 7–9+ years
Industry: Food Manufacturing / Food Production / Culinary R&D
Job Summary :-
Rajbhog Foods is seeking an experienced Culinary R&D Chef / Culinary Innovation Lead to support new product development, recipe commercialization, and high-volume food production. This role is ideal for a hands-on culinary professional who understands scratch cooking, food manufacturing, production trials, customer tastings, and scaling recipes from kitchen concept to full production.
Key Responsibilities
- Develop and improve flavorful, high-quality recipes for commercial food production.
- Lead product development from concept, kitchen trials, factory trials, and full production rollout.
- Lead customer tastings, sampling sessions, and product presentations while directly interacting with clients to understand their needs, collect feedback, and improve product quality.
- Create prototypes, test recipes, calculate yields, and support product costing.
- Support recipe development, label review, shelf-life testing, and technical approval.
- Identify gaps in current products and create new product ideas, including scratch-cooked meals.
- Improve flavor, quality, consistency, and presentation across product lines.
- Own recipe formulation, production yields, batch sheets, and recipe documentation.
- Lead internal tastings, ingredient testing, and product validation.
- Convert culinary ideas into clear SOPs, recipe cards, prep instructions, and production standards.
- Work closely with Operations and spend time on the production floor to ensure successful execution.
- Support first production runs and troubleshoot production challenges in real time.
- Drive continuous improvement in recipes, workflows, production processes, and product consistency.
- Find root causes of issues and create practical solutions.
- Collect and apply feedback from customers, Sales, Operations, and QA to improve products.
- Ensure products are not only compliant, but also flavorful, consistent, scalable, and repeatable.
- Partner with Sales to support customer presentations, product showcases, and new business opportunities.
- Help organize culinary systems, production flow, kitchen organization, and event execution processes.
- Create and maintain SOPs, prep systems, production timelines, packing procedures, and quality control standards.
- Deliver high-quality and visually appealing food presentations for customers and business development.
- Translate culinary innovation into customer-ready products, presentations, and product stories.
- Work closely with FSQA, Procurement, Supply Chain, and Production to ensure product feasibility and consistency.
- Support ingredient sourcing, substitutions, cost control, and production scalability.
- Ensure smooth hand off from R&D to Operations across company locations.
Required Experience & Qualifications :-
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in Culinary Arts, Food Science, Nutrition, or a related field.
- 7+ years of experience in culinary R&D, product development, food manufacturing, or high-volume food production.
- Strong experience with scratch cooking and recipe commercialization.
- Proven ability to take products from concept to full-scale production.
- Experience developing and scaling recipes for high-volume production environments.
- Strong understanding of flavor development, ingredients, food quality, and production feasibility.
- Ability to work in both a creative kitchen environment and a fast-paced production floor setting.
- Experience supporting customer tastings, presentations, or product showcases.
- Strong problem-solving skills with a focus on root cause analysis and continuous improvement.
- Ability to work with cross-functional teams including Operations, QA, Procurement, Sales, and Production.
- Strong knowledge of food production, commercialization, and operational execution.
- Ability to travel occasionally, as needed, to visit customers, factories, and trade shows.
Preferred Qualifications :-
- Experience in CPG, food manufacturing, frozen foods, prepared meals, or large-scale food service.
- Experience working in a USDA/FDA food production environment is a plus.
- Experience with recipe documentation, SOPs, batch sheets, yields, and production trials.
Ideal Candidate Traits:-
- Creative but highly organized.
- Calm under pressure.
- Detail-oriented and process-focused.
- Strong sense of urgency.
- Professional and polished.
- Solutions-focused and hands-on.
- Strong team player and mentor.
- High standards without ego.
- Passionate about great food, product quality, and customer experience.
Why Join Rajbhog Foods?
Join a growing food manufacturing company where your culinary ideas can become real products in the market. This role gives you the opportunity to work hands-on with product innovation, production teams, and customer-facing product development.
To Apply:-
Please send your resume to: [email protected]
Pay: $94,000.00 - $98,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- 401(k)
- Dental insurance
- Employee discount
- Health insurance
- Paid time off
- Vision insurance
Application Question(s):
- Have you developed a recipe from concept/kitchen trial to full production rollout?
- Do you have experience with high-volume food production or frozen/prepared foods manufacturing?
- Are you comfortable leading customer tastings, sampling sessions, and product presentations while directly interacting with clients?
- How many years of experience do you have in Culinary R&D, product development, recipe development, food manufacturing, or high-volume food production? Please briefly describe your most relevant experience.
Work Location: In person
