Operations Manager

Summary

Neo Bites is accelerating the shift toward sustainable animal nutrition, beginning with our canine companions. We’re looking for a reliable and passionate Operations Manager eager to help us solve some of the pet food industry’s greatest problems. We are an early-stage startup that builds everything from scratch, and we’re doing something new and innovative. Scrappiness, self-drive, and experiment-driven mentality are essential for this role. This role is not for the faint of heart - you will be hands on and directly involved in the day-to-day production process.

We recently closed our first funding round and are looking to meet the right person.

 

The Role

 What We’re Looking For:

Neo Bites is seeking an Operations Manager based in Austin, TX to take our company from a small and scrappy operation to the most efficient, scalable, and high-quality operation in the pet food industry. In an industry that is riddled with recalls and unhealthy practices, we made the decision to own our production, avoiding co-packers and shared facilities. It’s an uphill logistical battle, yes, but it’s one of our core values to put the health of our pups first and emphasize responsible practices. You must think strategically, be an expert problem solver, and understand no job is beneath you.

 

Responsibilities

The role will begin with about 25% logistics and business strategy, 25% production optimization, 20% planning, and 30% execution. The Operations Manager owns COGS on the P&L.

 

Responsibilities Include

• Strategic planning and projections
• Supply chain vendor management and relationship building, including the ethical and sustainable sourcing of materials. This may include opportunities for involvement in Product development.
• Purchasing of materials and strategically forecasting needs with the state of the current supply chain in mind
• Coordination of fulfillment calendar and events
• Materials processing and inventory management
• Recruitment and management of hourly processing and production help
• Order fulfillment and customer satisfaction
• Compliance and regulation as necessary
• Research and Development

The Operations Manager is an efficiency wizard. You want to automate yourself out of your tactical job, but know that’s a bit down the line. You’re walking into an environment with a lot of established internal knowledge and process, but want to soak that in, then make it 100x better.

 

Example Challenges

 

When scaling quickly, there are constant challenges around production optimization and inventory management. How can we forecast material needs given the unknowns surrounding the current supply chain? How can we cost effectively streamline order fulfillment in-house? How can we improve upon our insanely high (and only getting higher) sustainability standards? When the time comes for us to launch a full dog food, how can we keep that production in-house without producing an extruded kibble at high temperatures? The list goes on.

 

Success

Success looks like:

• More and more happy customers and pups getting their order on time and in good quality.
• Happy wholesale partners working with us who can trust we are prepared with enough inventory.
• Working closely and effectively with Growth and Product to experiment with and operationalize new product offerings quickly and cost effectively.
• Automating your role to be more supervisory and less tactical over time.
• A strong hold of our cost of goods sold.
• A CEO who can rest easy at night knowing things are taken care of :)

 

The Right Fit

Qualifications:

Ability to do the job as outlined above is baseline. Beyond that, character and cultural fit is everything for our small team. We’re looking to add an emotionally intelligent operator to the team that has been through this journey before, or who is an incredibly fast learner who knows their future is in startup operations. You are an Operations generalist, and a business-minded, tech savvy, people person. In a world of chaos, you create focus, calm, and reliability. You’re in love with the world of operations challenges, are passionate about dogs, sustainability, health and wellness, are an exceptional problem solver, and are looking to have a big hand in something exciting and impactful.

 

Experience

• Career experience. Your previous role was in logistics, operations, and/or supply chain with physical goods. We don’t care about degrees. Show us demonstrable success in that role.
• Market experience. You’ve worked for a consumer brand, even better if for a subscription brand. Could be CPG, ecomm, or other consumer facing product and/or technology company.
• Technical experience. Have a basic knowledge of the typical ecomm tech stack (shopify, google docs etc). You learn new tools easily, or come to the table with your own, and can make any tech stack work. Maybe you even know a little code or worked for a tech company.
• Financial experience. Some experience in business analysis, performance reporting, and financial reporting - able to run intermediately complex financial simulations.
• Startup Experience. Previous experience working in fast paced, resource-constrained startup environment.

Exceptional Experience

• Agile Experience. Experience with agile sprints and project management software (ie: Asana)
• Management experience. You’ve got experience building teams, active listening, building culture, etc.
• Perishable Experience. Experience in food, or otherwise perishable inventory.

Compensation

$24/hr-$27/hr (or 50k-56k salary) + equity. In the name of transparency: we’re a pre-seed startup that just closed our first round of funding. You’re amazing and talented, that’s why we want you. You are worth every penny you demand. Get your money. If cash is less important, and you want to lead an essential part of this incredible journey and understand the upside of early equity, this is your fit. Neo Bites is an investment for our entire team with incredible potential.

Next Steps

Email wesley@eatneobites.com with your LinkedIn, a short note telling us why you want to to be a part of the core team at Neo Bites (we will read them), and we’ll follow up for a coffee meeting to discuss things further if we think we’d be a good match.

 

The start date for this role is TBD but expected to be in the next few months.