Product Research & Development Analyst

Whole Foods - Austin, TX

Full-time - Entry Level

Austin, TX

10,001+ employees

Food and Beverage Retailers

About the position

The Product Research & Development Analyst at Whole Foods Market plays a crucial role in bringing innovative and high-quality products to life within the Exclusive Brands categories. This position involves supporting technical requirements and project workflows to ensure the smooth development and commercialization of new products, while maintaining compliance with quality standards and regulatory guidelines.

Responsibilities

• Support varying product categories and project teams, sometimes concurrently as the business necessitates.
• Contribute to the scoping phase of ideation within product categories by identifying trending ingredients and products at the request of Senior Product Developers.
• Follow up with suppliers on outstanding specification requests as necessary.
• Communicate with suppliers to ensure specifications are accurate, complete, and compliant with regulatory guidelines and WFM Quality Standards.
• Collect supporting technical information such as raw material and ingredient specifications, certifications, and SDS.
• Assist with reporting specification-related information to Product Development leadership and internal stakeholders.
• Assist with technical information management and perform data entry and workflow of technical information utilizing web-based project management applications.
• Partner with Senior Developers to create category insights decks by researching current consumer product goods via market research partner database.
• Identify and conduct comparisons against target products and sensory benchmarks through exploratory comp shops and cuttings.
• Support organoleptic evaluation for potential products, including comparisons between multiple potential vendors' sample submissions.
• Suggest sensory techniques to best evaluate sample submissions and reduce bias in evaluation.
• Communicate sensory, nutritional, and quality parameters to Senior Developers.
• Support effective launch of items through first production evaluation of samples against approved retains of final formulations.
• Communicate specification evaluations to Senior Product Developers in a timely manner.
• Evaluate product preparation instructions for Exclusive Brands products as applicable.
• Assure accuracy and integrity of product and ingredient specifications by adhering to WFM core values, quality, and brand standards.
• Perform other miscellaneous product development duties as necessary.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Biology, Chemistry, Food Science, or related field.
• 2-3 years' experience working in the CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) or ingredient industries.
• Knowledge of benchtop formulation and product development as it relates to CPG products.
• Ability to manage multiple projects and priorities and deliver against rapid development timelines.
• Detail-oriented and extremely organized.
• Excellent communication skills and ability to excel in cross-functional team settings.
• Computer proficiency and familiarity with most Microsoft Office applications, especially Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.

Nice-to-haves

• Cursory understanding of product development and related business processes.
• Sensory evaluation experience and skills are a plus.
• A passion for food, beverage, and the culinary world is a major plus.
• Experience developing natural and organic products is a plus.
• Knowledge of NFL regulations as they relate to product development is helpful.
• General understanding of product development, manufacturing, and commercialization.
• Familiarity with retailer web-based specification systems would be ideal.

Benefits

• Equal employment opportunity for all Team Members and candidates.
• Promotes diversity and inclusion in the workplace.