Overview
Ark Foods is seeking a Director of Marketing to help share our exciting line of vegetable products with the world.
We are reinventing the produce aisle with a suite of single serve, one-step-prep, fresh veggies straight from our farms. They are targeted toward today’s younger consumer, who wants a no-hassle, unique vegetable experience. All for less than six bucks. Our legacy is in farming, but we consider ourselves to be a CPG company.
Ark Foods is known for popularizing shishito peppers, but now we’re deep in product development for our future lineup, including Sweet Acre Squash with Ginger Maple Syrup, Honey Zeppers, fresh veggie noodles, and multiple others. All these new products will be sold on shelves across the USA, through existing retail relationships we already have via Whole Foods, FreshDirect, Costco, etc.
We are a startup going through a period of massive growth, so this job is as huge as you want it to be. By legacy we have been a sales-driven organization whose products have “sold themselves”. Typical of many startups, we’ve had limited bandwidth to actively pursue marketing activities. Until now. Besides a modest social media presence, we have yet to tackle any number of open marketing pursuits.
In a nutshell, the Marketing Director’s role is… to create a marketing program from scratch.
Requirements
This is a tough role, but a really exciting one. We are looking for someone to create a marketing program from the ground up. We are a lean team, so we have to be creative. There are many questions we have to answer.
How do we learn more about and connect directly with our end customers, when all of our sales are via retailers? How narrowly defined should our target customer segment be? How can we build our Instagram presence in service of our broader mission? Should we have a blog? What is the ROI on the Costco demos that we are currently doing? How can we build our brand awareness without sacrificing our authenticity? Which of the 10 key product attributes of our new product line should we emphasize on the packaging? Why? Is it worth it to start a mailing list? How should we approach this? Our website needs a revamp – how should we go about this?
In Your Favor
Startup experience
Comfort with ambiguity
Get-it-done-yourself attitude
Track record scaling young food brand or product
Great organizational skills
Love of food
Experience with….
… vegetables
… supermarkets / retailers
… young brands or products
Additional Info
All the specialty veggies you can eat!
Based in Brooklyn, NY
Competitive comp package (DOE) – salary + equity
About Ark Foods
Ark Foods is revolutionizing the veggies we eat. We are a venture-backed, leading brand of unique, heirloom vegetable products. The company is the largest producer of shishito peppers in the US. We created the wave. Our customers already include major supermarkets, online grocers, produce distributors, and meal kit companies. The company is headquartered in Brooklyn, and operates farms and distribution centers up and down the East Coast.