Operations Director

La Siembra Co-operative, creators of Camino is seeking an Operations Director to lead the efficient operations of the business. 

Camino makes great-tasting chocolate, hot chocolate and baking goods that are Fairtrade and Organic certified. Camino products use ingredients of the highest quality, which are grown and harvested ethically through environmentally sustainable practices.

Camino is Spanish for “path or journey,” speaks to the roots of the company. From the beginning, Camino was founded on a desire to provide a fair and direct trading relationship between cocoa and sugar producers in the global south and Canadians. Through Camino’s relationship with our producer partners – the co-operatives of family farmers – we are helping to break cycles of poverty and build stronger rural communities in the countries where we do business.   

Camino products are sourced from 11 different countries and are sold in over 3000 retail outlets across Canada.

Reporting to the CEO the Operations Director is responsible for ensuring the optimization of La Siembra’s supply chain, inventory management, margin and Quality Assurance.  The successful candidate will have experience in Operations Management, be a collaborative manager and have an experience in food supply chains.

Responsibilities:

Supply Chain

• Develop and maintain long-term strategic relationships with key suppliers, including fair trade cooperatives, manufacturers and co-packers.
• Negotiate annual supplier contracts and co-packing agreements.
• Ensure product quality and integrity from key suppliers.
• Develop new supply chains to enable product innovation and expansion.

Cost of Goods

• Forecasting, monitoring and managing the landed cost of all Camino products.
• Identifying opportunities for cost savings and acting upon these opportunities

Inventory Management

• Responsible for forecasting, inventory management, purchasing, and warehouse capacity planning to handle significant business growth and promotional fluctuations while meeting operational targets
• Ensure that inventory holding costs are managed to ensure margin targets.
• Reduce delivery costs and time (from order placement to customer delivery) by improving carrier costs, optimizing and consolidating orders/routes, and implementing advanced technologies

Quality Assurance

• Oversee compliance with organic, kosher, fair trade and other certifications.
• Ensure total product quality.
• Oversee the processes and systems to deal with product complaints or supplier quality issues.

Management of Operations team

• Recruit, train, supervise, and evaluate team members
• Develop and maintain an effective team and responsibility structure
• Support competency growth for the team and individual team members
• Support the learning and growth of their team.

Member of the management team

• Contribute to development of overall business strategies, objectives and plans
• Participate in day-to-day management of business operations

Formal qualifications:

• A degree in Operations Management, Business Administration or comparable;
• At least 10 years of progressive experience in Operations Management, Supply Chain Management and Quality Assurance, including significant experience in the food industry;
• At least 3 years of managerial experience;
• Excellent decision making skills, including the ability to take sound decisions based extrapolations, estimates and intuition.
• Excellent planning and organizing skills, including the ability to successfully develop and implement processes and procedures;
• Proven ability to problem solve in a fast paced work environment;
• Outstanding analytical skills and the ability to deal effectively with large amounts of data;
• Good command of the Spanish language;
• Strong and proven identification with our vision, mission and values.