Chief Operations Officer

Overview:

Summary of Position

Kanbe’s Markets is on a mission to build a more inclusive food system by transforming food loss into food access. We rescue produce that would otherwise go to waste and deliver it to more than 125 neighborhood corner stores, 60+ hunger relief partners, and patients through healthcare programs.

Our team has grown quickly, and we are hiring a Chief Operating Officer to help us run well as we keep growing. We value hard work and are guided by our core values of community, integrity, passion, collaboration, and cultivation.

 

The Position Overview

The COO leads how Kanbe’s runs day to day: the systems, habits, and people that help every team work well together. They own our operating rhythm, decision rights, and the tools and processes every department runs on, with the opportunity to build them from the ground up as we grow.

It is as much a people and change role as an operations role. The COO will grow our managers into strong leaders and make the way we work clear and consistent.

This is a full-time, on-site role in Kansas City, reporting to the Founder and CEO.

Responsibilities:

Core Duties & Responsibilities

• Lead Kanbe’s through its next stage of growth: plan and guide the changes that come with new facilities, new programs, and a larger team, so people understand the why, the what, and their part in it.
• Build and run the operating rhythm for the whole organization: weekly 1:1s with every department leader, one cross-department operating meeting, monthly metrics reviews, and quarterly planning.
• Make roles and ownership clear: one current job description and charter for every role, one owner for every shared piece of work (donor and partner handoffs, events, volunteers, store relationships, patient enrollment, kitchen production, inventory, etc.), and written decision rights between teams.
• Grow the team: coach department leaders, build a manager-development program, set up regular 1:1s, reviews, and career paths, and plan hiring with leaders as the organization grows.
• Build the systems: standard operating procedures, one system of record for operations, shared tools used consistently, and a dashboard that shows how every department is doing.
• Build culture and communication: keep staff informed and connected through growth, close the gaps between teams, and make Kanbe’s a place people want to stay.
• Stand up food-safety, fleet, and workplace-safety programs across the warehouse, vehicles, coolers, and kitchen.
• Steward the budget with the finance lead: turn the budget into department operating plans, review budget-vs-actual monthly with each leader, manage purchasing within approved limits, honor grant and donor restrictions, and raise financial risks to the CEO and board early.
• Keep every program running steadily (corner stores, food redirection, Food is Medicine, and fundraising and events) while Kanbe’s builds out its new facility and kitchen.

 

Impact Description

• Own: what are singularly responsible for? Why does this role exist/what’s the business need?
  • How Kanbe’s runs: Roles, processes, decision rights, tools, and the weekly rhythm that keep every team moving together.
  • Change leadership: Guiding the team through growth, new facilities, and new programs so change is planned, explained, and adopted.
  • Team development: A growing leadership bench, staff who know what they own, and a culture where people stay and advance.
  • Implementation: Turning the strategic plan and capital campaign into dated, owned work that happens on time.
  • Safety and quality: Food safety, organizational, fleet, and DOT compliance, and workplace safety across every site.
  • Financial stewardship: Operating performance against the financial plan. Department leaders own their budgets; the COO holds them to it and brings variances to the CEO.

 

• Assist: what will you be involved in, or collaborate with other individuals + teams on?
  • Finance: Partner with the finance lead, who owns accounting, cash, reporting, compliance, and audit, on budgets, forecasts, and controls that scale as we grow.
  • Development: Help the development team run smoothly, with clear processes, tools, and handoffs to programs.
  • Healthcare partnerships: Help Food is Medicine leadership turn contracts into reliable delivery and outcome data.
  • HR partner: Work with our HR provider on policies, benefits, and hiring logistics.

 

• Teach: what experience do you need to possess? What do we need an expert on
  • Leading change: Someone who has taken a team through real growth, built buy-in instead of forcing it, and paced change so the work keeps getting done.
  • Building systems from scratch: Someone who has installed rhythms, roles, and processes in a growing organization and made them stick.
  • Growing people: Coaching managers, settling disputes between senior peers, and holding a high bar so anyone with the right attitude can learn and grow here.

 

• Learn: since no one is perfect, what are the “nice to haves”? What can you learn on the job? What do you not know yet that will be critical to their success?
  • Food systems: The food system is large, complex, and broken at the systemic level. Curiosity about it matters more than prior knowledge.
  • Fresh Produce: How we triage and deliver fresh produce quickly and efficiently. We’re happy to teach this.
  • Logistics/trucking: Experience with fleets and cold chain is a plus, but strong leaders learn our specifics quickly.
  • Nonprofit finance and grants: The finance lead owns accounting, cash, reporting, and audit, and grant rules can be learned on the job. Managing to a budget is expected from day one.
  • Healthcare: Food is Medicine contracting is new for us too. We’ll learn it with our healthcare partners.

 

Within 1 month, you’ll

• Understand our structure, every team member’s role, and our short- and long-term strategy.
• Hold 1:1s with every leader and a listening tour with every team and key partners: staff, store owners, donors and funders, healthcare partners, suppliers, and volunteers.
• Know our core tools: Google Workspace, Asana, Slack, Virtuous, HubSpot, routing, and inventory.
• Share back what’s working, what’s stuck, and the first changes you’ll make.

 

Within 3 months, you’ll

• Have written decision rights, built with the CEO and leadership team, in use.
• Run a weekly, monthly, and quarterly rhythm with a dashboard every department reports into.
• Have named single owners for shared work across every department: External Affairs (donor and partner handoffs, events, volunteers), Operations (inventory, receiving, cooler quality),
• Community Engagement (store, organization, and community relationships), Food is Medicine (patient enrollment and healthcare partner reporting), the kitchen (production planning and food safety), and the CEO's office (scheduling, approvals, and requests).
• Have 1:1s, reviews, and a monthly budget-vs-actual check running with every leader, and a plan for the facility changes.

 

Within 6 months, you’ll

• Have daily operations running smoothly across every team, with a clear owner for each area.
• Have teams settling cross-department issues among themselves and working toward shared goals.
• Have a manager-development program underway and current charters for every role.
• Have every department running on an operating plan tied to the annual budget.
• Have standard operating procedures in use in every department, with safety programs at every site.

 

Within 12 months, you’ll

• Be a trusted source of truth and leadership within the organization.
• Have a named backup for every leadership role, and retention, holding or improving through growth.
• Have guided the team through the facility and kitchen changes with service holding steady.
• Have built an organization where plans turn into action, with full accountability across every team.
• Lead the next year's operating budget with the finance lead.
• Recommend, with the CEO, whether some leaders should formally report to the COO in year two.

Qualifications:

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of senior leadership, including 5+ years leading across multiple departments in a growing organization of roughly 40 to 100+ people.
• A track record of leading an organization through significant change (rapid growth, restructuring, new facilities, or new service lines) and bringing people along with it.
• Has built operating systems from scratch and made them stick: clear roles, decision rights, KPIs, meeting rhythms, and written processes that people actually use.
• A people developer who has grown managers into leaders, built teams where people know what they own, and handled hard conversations with care.
• Experience leading beside a founder or CEO, including telling them no and keeping the relationship strong.
• Has owned a meaningful budget, managed leaders to it, and made hard resource tradeoffs when money was tight.
• Comfort leading very different teams at once: fundraising and marketing, community programs, healthcare partnerships, a kitchen, and physical operations such as a warehouse and fleet.

 

Preferred Skills

• Formal change-management, organizational-development, or continuous-improvement training (Lean, EOS, or similar).
• Strong with business software and systems: project management (Asana), CRM and donor tools (HubSpot, Virtuous), inventory and routing systems, Google Workspace, and dashboards. Has chosen and rolled out new tools and gotten teams to actually use them.
• Team management at scale: has managed managers across several departments, including office-based teams such as development, programs, and administration, and has run hiring, onboarding, and reviews across them.
• Exposure to food, distribution, or facility operations, such as food safety, fleet compliance, or a facility move. A plus, not a requirement.
• Experience working with healthcare partners or regulated programs.
• Strong Kansas City relationships and a desire to deepen them.

 

Compensation

$150,000–$200,000, commensurate with experience.

 

Benefits

Full-time (40 hours per week) position with health, vision, and dental insurance and a retirement plan with matching.

 

Vacation / Sick time

In addition to company holidays (see handbook), this position is eligible for up to 176 hours of paid time off annually, available after 90 days of continuous employment.

Kanbe’s is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity, and sexual orientation), national origin, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, or any other legally protected status.

 

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