The Opportunity
This is a high-impact leadership with autonomy and accountability. The GM carries full P&L responsibility for a well-established U.S. business with year-round customer programs, a differentiated multi-origin supply platform, and an ambitious growth agenda. The successful leader inherits an experienced functional team, direct access to senior leadership and the Board, and the authority to strengthen commercial discipline, operating performance, and organizational capability.
Position Overview
The General Manager leads the U.S. business unit of a vertically integrated fresh-food marketer serving major retail grocery customers. Reporting to the Chief Operating Officer, this role owns the full P&L and annual business plan, leads a team of functional managers, and is accountable for commercial strategy, procurement, supply chain execution, working capital, compliance, and talent. The mandate is to accelerate profitable growth while improving the predictability, service level, and operating discipline required to scale.
Core Responsibilities
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Full P&L & Growth: Own revenue, gross margin, direct and indirect costs, operating expenses, capital spending, and working capital; deliver substantial profitable growth against the Board-approved business plan.
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Commercial Strategy: Deepen strategic retail relationships, negotiate long-term agreements, and improve the sales mix while protecting pricing discipline.
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Procurement & Supply: Expand sourcing across growers and geographies to support reliable, 52-week availability across four core berry categories while protecting margin and quality.
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Operational Excellence: Improve fill rate and service level; reduce spoilage, rejections, claims, inventory aging, and operating cost; strengthen cross-border logistics and cold-chain execution.
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Leadership & Governance: Lead and develop managers across Sales, Procurement, Operations, HR, and Finance/Admin; build succession depth, reduce voluntary turnover, and maintain weekly, monthly, and quarterly performance-review cadences.
Qualifications & Skills
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General Management: 3-5+ years of full P&L at comparable scale - not just a sales quota or department budget - including direct experience leading a team of functional managers, not individual contributors.
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Bilingual Fluency: Professional working proficiency in English and Spanish, sufficient to lead commercial negotiations with growers and suppliers, and to communicate directly with the Mexico-based leadership team, without an interpreter.
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Business Acumen: Strong financial, commercial, and operational judgment; comfortable negotiating strategic customer and supplier agreements and owning the margin/cost tradeoffs behind them.
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Leadership Style: An ownership mindset - runs the business as if it were their own - plus decisiveness, high accountability, and the ability to operate autonomously within an approved plan.
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Education & Industry: MBA preferred or equivalent executive experience required for the scope of this role that includes managing managers rather than managing individual contributors or tasks. Fresh produce, agribusiness, or other perishable-product experience is helpful but not required.
Location & Travel
On-site in Fresno, California with approximately 30-40% domestic and international travel to customers, suppliers, growing regions, and company locations.
