Export Sales Manager, La Vie
€45-55k
Vegetable meat product
Be an early applicant
Vegetable meat product
501-1000 employees
Be an early applicant
€45-55k
501-1000 employees
Company mission
To evolve people from animal-based meat to plant-based.
Role
Who you are
- This is a hunting job: we are looking for our next plant-based bacon addict who loves opening doors, closing deals and turning them into profitable, long-lasting partnerships
- A true hunter: prospecting, pitching, closing - you master the full hunting playbook, and you manage your clients best-in-class
- Sales education with export experience, and a European QSR footprint: you already have a network in the QSR world
- Strong negotiation skills, supply & finance acumen, fluent in English
- Entrepreneurial mindset: organized, flexible, agile - comfortable in the unknown
- Relational ease and the ability to adapt to different cultures
- And ideally… a genuine plant-based bacon addict
What the job involves
- Export is La Vie’s guerrilla territory: a small footprint today, a huge playground tomorrow. Its purpose is simple: generate additional sales for La Vie while keeping complexity low
- The potential is big: Europe’s QSR giants already serve our bacon and need better plant-based products in their menu to drive additional sales and attract new audiences - and plenty of brands are looking for the best plant-based products to power their own ranges
- You will lead the international sales development (Worldwide: France & UK excluded) and manage one Export Business Developer (intern)
- BUILD - hunt for growth:
- Develop QSR deals across Europe as the top priority: grow existing partnerships on our current range and push our innovations to open new doors and win the major tenders ahead
- Hunt partnerships with other brands (plant-based players & food brands) to sell our finished and semi-finished products everywhere our brand is not
- Build the Annual Export Sales Budget with the CSO and qualify every opportunity against La Vie’s deal criteria: size, capacity, profitability, low complexity
- Prepare tomorrow’s growth: assess new market opportunities and build the export plans for 2027+
- RUN - make it last:
- Maintain and grow our existing retail deals (Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands): promo plans, store distribution, innovation push
- Manage our distributor & retailer partnerships: drive their objectives and push them to reach their targets
- Own the end-to-end sales process on new deals, from prospecting to signature, and take care of your customers’ everyday needs
- Monitor performance, analyze market trends and report on sales, forecasts and areas for improvement
- Coordinate internally with production, supply chain, logistics and marketing to make every launch a success
Application process
- You will first have a video call with someone from the HR team followed by interviews with Virginie, our CSO, and key team members
- We will also ask you to work on a practical case study focused and meet Nicolas, our CEO. We usually take references
- Start Date: 01 October 2026
Our take
The Veganism boom came around the 2010s and is still very prevalent with a huge market for plant-based foods. La Vie is a Paris-based company that develops vegetable meats with five products so far. The company's passion for what it does came from the rise in intensive breeding, now amounting to 14.5% of today’s CO2 emissions, 27% land use and 77 billion animals left in pieces in 2021.
The company had a huge win at the end of 2022 announcing its partnership with Burger King. La Vie bacon was rolled out across all UK stores in line with Veganuary. This partnership is said to be ongoing as Burger King hopes to be 50% plant-based by 2030 which is a huge success for La Vie. The company also won ‘Best Plant-Based Bacon in the UK’ at the Plant Based World Expo for the second consecutive year as well as ‘Best Vegan Bacon’ at the PETA UK Vegan Food Awards.
The company raised €25M at the beginning of 2022 from Angel Investors including Natalie Portman and raised further funding in 2024 from Zintinus and Sparkfood. In only a short time, the company has been highly successful and established some well-rooted relationships for its product. So it will be exciting to see where La Vie takes its plant-based love and fun aesthetic next.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Company
Funding (last 2 of 3 rounds)
Oct 2024
$29.1m
EARLY VC
Sep 2023
$1.8m
EARLY VC
Total funding: $59.9m
Company HQ
Javel, Paris, France
Leadership
Nicolas Schweitzer
(Co-Founder & CEO)Previously Founder and CEO of Inclusio, Managing Director of Asia for Oradian and was a EFPA2 Cohort Member.
Vincent Poulichet
(Co-Founder & CTO)Extensive research and education in physics/chemical engineering. Most recently as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Ecole Normale Supérieure.
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