Product Development Manager

About Gregory Packaging

Gregory Packaging Inc. is a fourth-generation, family-owned beverage manufacturer with more than a century of operating history and five production facilities across Pennsylvania, Virginia, Georgia, Arizona, and New Jersey. We are a full-service provider of packaging, fill and finish, and value-added manufacturing for the beverage, foodservice, and portion markets, with integrated capabilities in aseptic processing, eco-friendly carton formats, high-capacity bottling, and turnkey production.

We are the market leader in 100% fruit juice and single-serve beverage solutions for K-12 schools and institutional foodservice under our SunCup brand, and we are actively expanding into premium water (GLAS), functional and sports nutrition (LockerBox), concentrates (GregPak), and co-packing partnerships through Gregory Partners.

Our differentiated strength is vertical integration: we own the plants, so we can move from concept to commercial run faster than brands that outsource. What we need now is someone to run that pipeline with discipline.

About the Role

The Product Development Manager owns new products from first concept to first commercial run. This is a project management and commercialization role at its core. You will run the stage-gate process, hold the timeline, manage outside development partners, and drive alignment across processing, quality assurance, packaging design, procurement, and sales.

You do not need to be the person at the bench. Formula development is executed in partnership with external flavor houses, ingredient suppliers, and development labs — your job is to write the brief, select and manage those partners, evaluate what comes back against the product target and the cost model, and translate the approved formula into something our plants can actually run at scale, on spec, at cost.

We are looking for someone with a beverage or food manufacturing background who has worked across both the development side and the supply chain side, and who understands that a formula is only real once the raw materials are qualified, the line is scheduled, and the artwork is printed. This is a role with room to grow into broader ownership of the innovation function.

Who We're Looking For

The ideal candidate has 5+ years in a beverage or food manufacturing environment, in a role that touched both product development and supply chain. You have carried multiple concurrent projects, worked across more than one package format, and delivered against customer-driven specs and launch dates that were not negotiable.

You are comfortable in a smaller, faster, family-owned environment where you will have fewer resources than a large CPG and considerably more autonomy. You would rather own the whole product than a slice of it.

You'll stand out if you've done several of these:

• Worked in aseptic, hot-fill, bag-in-box, or concentrate formats
• Supported private-label or co-pack programs where a retail or foodservice customer drove the brief
• Worked alongside ingredient sourcing, supplier qualification, or COGS modeling
• Coordinated packaging design and artwork routing against a hard print and production deadline
• Spent time in juice, teas, lemonades, functional beverages, or portion-pack foodservice

We don't expect all five. If you have a strong project management foundation and a real launch or two behind you, we want to talk.

Key Responsibilities:

Project Leadership

• Own the new product development calendar end to end — concept, brief, benchtop, pilot, plant trial, first production run, and post-launch review
• Build and maintain timelines, critical paths, and stage-gate checkpoints for every active project in the pipeline
• Run recurring cross-functional project meetings; publish agendas, decisions, owners, and due dates so nothing lives in someone's inbox
• Escalate risk early — flag slipping timelines, cost overruns, and spec conflicts before they become launch problems
• Maintain a single source of truth on pipeline status that sales and leadership can rely on for customer commitments

External development partners

• Write clear development briefs defining the product target: flavor profile, nutritional targets, claims, shelf life, cost ceiling, and packaging format
• Source, evaluate, and manage flavor houses, ingredient suppliers, co-development labs, and third-party testing partners
• Manage the sample cycle — request, track, organize, and coordinate internal evaluation of iterations against the brief
• Negotiate development timelines with outside partners and hold them to those dates
• Review costed formulas against target COGS and drive reformulation where the math doesn't work

Supply chain and sourcing

• Qualify ingredient and raw material suppliers; manage lead times, MOQs, and dual-sourcing where single-source risk is unacceptable
• Partner with procurement on commodity exposure, contract timing, and cost-out opportunities
• Build the material readiness plan that supports the launch date — ingredients, packaging materials, closures, cases, and labels landed on time
• Support demand planning on initial launch forecasts and inventory build

Cross-functional coordination

• Partner with Processing to validate that formulas are compatible with aseptic and hot-fill processing, and to schedule pilot runs and plant trials
• Partner with Quality Assurance on specifications, shelf-life and stability protocols, sensory panels, micro standards, labeling accuracy, and regulatory compliance
• Partner with Packaging Design and outside creative agencies on structural format selection, artwork routing, dieline approvals, and print timing so packaging is ready when the product is
• Partner with Sales and Business Development to translate customer and market input into product definition, and to support customer presentations, samples, and line reviews

Commercialization

• Own the handoff to operations: finished specifications, batch sheets, run parameters, and quality standards documented so the product replicates cleanly across all five facilities
• Lead first-production-run oversight on site and drive resolution of any issues that surface
• Manage item setup, spec documentation, and launch readiness across internal systems
• Conduct post-launch reviews and feed learnings back in to the process
• Support renovation of existing SKUs — cost reduction, ingredient substitution, format extension, and reformulation

Qualifications:

Required

• 5+ years in product development, commercialization, project management, or supply chain within beverage or food manufacturing
• Demonstrated track record taking at least one product from concept through commercial launch
• Experience working with external partners — flavor houses, ingredient suppliers, contract labs, or design agencies
• Exposure to shelf-stable beverage processing (aseptic and/or hot-fill), or the ability to come up to speed on it quickly
• Strong cross-functional influence: able to drive alignment across operations, quality, design, and commercial teams without direct authority
• Excellent documentation discipline and written communication
• Willingness to travel to Gregory Packaging facilities (approximately 20-30%)

Preferred

• Private label or co-manufacturing experience where the customer owns the brief
• Juice, tea, lemonade, concentrate, or functional beverage category background
• Working knowledge of formulation fundamentals — sweetener systems, acidification, functional ingredients, flavor development — sufficient to evaluate partner work critically
• Familiarity with FDA labeling requirements, nutritional panel generation, and claims substantiation
• Experience with Tetra Pak or other carton formats, bag-in-box, and frozen or ambient concentrates
• Bachelor's degree in food science, engineering, supply chain, business, or a related field

What Success Looks Like in Year One

• Every active project has a documented timeline, owner, and gate status
• A repeatable stage-gate process is in place and being followed
• New products launch on the dates committed to customers
• Outside development partners are managed to defined briefs and deadlines
• Specifications transfer cleanly to plants without rework at first production