The posting
The Vice President of Brand Development, Innovation & Insights leads the development and evolution of AVI Foodsystems' proprietary dining and retail brand portfolio, ensuring concepts remain competitive, trend-forward, relevant and aligned with consumer preferences and market trends. This role drives brand development, retail concept innovation, customer experience, promotions and strategic partnerships across AVI's operating divisions.
As AVI's enterprise-wide subject matter expert in consumer insights and market intelligence, this leader translates consumer research, competitive intelligence and emerging trends into actionable strategies that inform brand development, innovation and business growth.
Working collaboratively with marketing, operations, culinary and other cross-functional teams, this position leads the creation, positioning, launch and ongoing evolution of differentiated dining and retail concepts that strengthen AVI's competitive advantage and deliver measurable business results.
Initial Key Projects
- New Micro Market Concept: Lead consumer and competitive research, concept development, naming, positioning, experience design and recommendations for rollout, investment and ROI.
- AVI Signature Brand Portfolio: Evaluate and refine AVI's proprietary dining and retail brands, identifying opportunities to enhance, consolidate, replace or discontinue concepts. Develop brand positioning, architecture, standards, implementation guides and division-specific strategies to ensure consistency, scalability and performance.
- Culinary Operations: Support development of differentiated dining concepts, smart/enhanced vending experiences and consumer programming aligned with business and operational needs.
- Retail Concept & Product Innovation: Identify opportunities for new concepts, products and consumer experiences based on emerging trends and market insights. Partner with culinary, marketing and operations teams to bring innovative offerings to market.
- AVI Promotions & Campaigns: Evaluate and enhance existing promotional programs, develop division- and region-specific strategies, and establish consistent execution standards and performance measures.
- K-12 Programming: Assess existing offerings, consumer trends and competitive opportunities across NSLP and non-NSLP accounts. Recommend refreshed concepts, programming, positioning and implementation strategies.
- Enterprise Insights & Market Intelligence: Lead AVI's companywide insights strategy as the organization's subject matter expert in consumer research, market trends and competitive intelligence. Translate findings into actionable strategies that drive innovation, enhance customer experiences and inform business decisions.
Potential Future Projects
- Brand Experience & Implementation: Support brand identity, customer experience design, digital touchpoints, launch strategies and post-launch evaluation.
- Loyalty & Digital Engagement: Support development of an enterprise loyalty program and white-label application to strengthen consumer engagement and retention.
- Refreshment Services Innovation: Develop new concepts, programming and positioning strategies supported by consumer research, competitive analysis, ROI assessments and sales tools.
- AVI Center for Excellence: Serve as a committee member and project leader in developing programming, innovation initiatives and best practices.
- Research & Intelligence Infrastructure: Establish tools and processes to monitor consumer trends, competitive activity and industry innovation through research platforms, trade publications relationships, industry events and strategic partnerships.
- Insights & Performance Measurement: Develop dashboards and reporting standards to track brand awareness, customer satisfaction, engagement, retention, adoption and innovation performance.
- Long-Term Brand Growth: Develop strategies to strengthen AVI's brand portfolio, expand market opportunities and drive consumer engagement.
- Education & Knowledge Sharing: Share consumer insights, brand innovation trends, retail best practices and market intelligence to strengthen organizational capabilities and support informed decision-making.
Travel Expectations: Travel requirements will vary based on active projects and initiatives and may include time on-site at specific operating locations or AVI's Headquarters Service Center (HQSC), as needed. The Vice President for Brand Development, Innovation & Insights must spend a minimum of five days per month at HQSC.
Benefits:
- A family culture and atmosphere
- Competitive compensation
- Health, dental, vision, and life insurance for full-time team members
- 401(k) with generous company match
- Paid vacations and holidays
- Immense training and growth opportunities
We conduct pre-employment drug testing. EOE



