Dandelion Chocolate is a bean-to-bar chocolate factory in the Mission District of San Francisco.
We opened our workshop out of a lifetime love of chocolate. Our friends often said that given enough time, it seemed inevitable that one of us would open a chocolate factory. They watched as we experimented with growing small cacao plants in our apartments, pan roasted beans in the oven, and ate our way through the many of the chocolate shops of the world.
In early 2010, we decided to share our craft chocolate with our friends and family and have expanded since. Currently, in our factory in the Mission district of San Francisco, we roast, crack, sort, winnow, grind, conch, and temper small batches of beans and then mold and package each bar by hand. By sourcing high quality beans and carefully crafting tiny batches, we try to bring out the individual flavors and nuances of each bean.
We’re excited to bring artisan bean-to-bar chocolate back to the bay area. Like many, we miss Scharffen Berger now that they moved east to join Hershey’s. We lost our local source for cocoa nibs and some of our favorite bars of dark chocolate. We hope and aspire to take over where others have left off and bring quality, local chocolate back to the area.
Your day is filled with three main responsibilities: processing wholesale orders, wholesale customer service, and cross-departmental communication. You know Dandelion Chocolate’s story, brand, and process by heart, and can easily answer customers’ questions over the phone, email, and in person. You are engaged in the department and company and reliably communicate the progress of goals and the status of wholesale orders. As we increase chocolate production, you manage the onboarding of new wholesale accounts with the same personal, high-level customer service that you use for our existing wholesale accounts. You are dialed into the ordering patterns of our wholesale customers, use spreadsheets to track order frequencies, and are sure to follow up when it’s been a while since a customer has placed an order. You love deepening relationships with our customers -- when Adam, a customer of 3 years, mentions it’s been a busy week, you slip an extra Esmeraldas bar (his favorite) into his next order. Your weekly email updates the ChOps Team about future wholesale orders and mentions any potential hiccups that they should be aware of. Throughout the week, you pay close attention to the systems in place and recommend improvements when you see potential weak points. At the end of the day, you prepare the paperwork and order information for the next morning before tidying up your workspace along with the team. You will be evaluated on order accuracy, timeliness, and your tracking of customer ordering patterns.
About You
Our ideal candidate is excited to work in a growing company filled with people who care deeply about what they do. You embrace change and proactively create systems that will accommodate future growth. You naturally go the extra mile and love looking for opportunities to go above and beyond to strengthen relationships with customers, both new and existing. Service comes naturally to you, be it talking on the phone with a new wholesale customer, emailing a polite and understanding response to an upset wholesale customer, or discussing prospective opportunities face to face. You clearly communicate issues, opportunities, and solutions to your team, managers, and the CEO. You ask clarifying questions to get to the bottom of issues and understand the full context of problems. Your organization and coordination of requests between Dandelion’s five locations help your teammates operate seamlessly every day. You love to learn and easily switch between tasks while prioritizing what needs to be done now, what can be done later, and when we need a new approach.
Responsibilities
- Communication -- Proactively communicate shipping delays and upcoming orders to both wholesale customers and your team. Act as a resource for multiple departments such as Product Makers, Cafe, and Wholesale by gathering information from wholesale customers about their needs.
- Customer Service -- Exhibit world-class service when corresponding with our wholesale customers over email, phone, and in person. Build and strengthen relationships by responding quickly to emails, being relentlessly positive under time-pressure and being unflappably dependable in such a way that partners know you'll keep your delivery promises and they’ll want to work with you again.
- Attention to Detail -- Be proactive about staying on top of special orders and individual requests and keep track of packages so that operations continue to run seamlessly.
- Tracking and Metrics -- Track order inaccuracies and resolutions. Constantly look for ways to improve efficiencies and help our wholesale department continue to raise the bar.
- Deadline-driven -- You can adjust to shifting priorities and cope with last minute changes and challenges.
- Team Player -- Very willing to help! You always go the extra mile to make sure that things get done such as stepping in to fill orders if the team is short staffed. You like to see your team members succeed and get along with everyone.
- Other tasks as necessaryÂ
Requirements
- Tech Skills -- We use products such as Google Suite, ShipStation, Freshdesk, Quickbooks, and Stitchlabs. We don’t expect you to know everything, just be willing to learn!
- Excellent verbal and written skills -- You have previously worked in a role where communication skills were necessary for success.Â
Benefits
Dandelion Chocolate constantly invests in our people and culture. All team members receive medical, vision, and dental benefits as well as the option to enroll in our 401k program. All employees receive paid vacation time, holiday pay, and paid sick time. In addition, our team members enjoy commuter benefits, FSAs, local gym discounts, chocolate tasting opportunities, the chance to travel to origin and our Japan locations, and a range of opportunities to grow and develop within the company.
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