Customer Relationship Manager - Beverage Co-packing

SIP Manufacturing is a growing beverage co-packing and contract manufacturing organization expanding its production capacity with a new facility in Southaven, Mississippi. The Customer Relationship Manager will own relationships with beverage brand customers, leading account management, onboarding, production coordination, commercial management, quality issue resolution, and customer reporting across the portfolio.

Responsibilities:

• Manage a portfolio of brand accounts, from emerging startups through established CPG, representing a meaningful share of our overall production volume
• Serve as the single point of contact across all of a customer's SKUs and scheduled runs
• Build durable relationships with founders, supply chain leads and brand managers; understand each customer's seasonality, sales channels and growth plans
• Handle competing brands with absolute discretion — formulations, forecasts, costs and launch plans stay with the customer they belong to
• Lead new customer onboarding: spec intake, formulation handoff to R&D, ingredient and packaging qualification, trial runs and first commercial production
• Coordinate scale-up from bench to line, managing customer expectations around what changes between the two
• Build and maintain accurate bills of materials, product specs, and finished goods specifications
• Manage artwork and label workflow, including nutrition panels, claims, allergen statements and TTB COLA submissions where applicable
• Collect and challenge customer forecasts; feed demand into scheduling and S&OP
• Work with planning to secure line time and communicate the schedule, including changes, as early as possible
• Track component readiness — cans, bottles, closures, labels, film, trays, cartons — against long-lead items and MOQs, and flag shortfalls before they stop a line
• Manage customer-supplied versus plant-supplied materials, inventory positions, and aged or obsolete component decisions
• Quote tolling fees, minimum run quantities, changeover charges, storage and rework
• Manage pricing changes, pass-through of component costs, and annual agreement renewals
• Own retention and volume targets across the portfolio
• Grow accounts through additional SKUs, new formats, and expanded volume
• Represent our position as an independent co-packer with no brands of our own — we never compete with the customers we fill for
• Report run results back to customers: yields, loss, overages and shortages, and case counts
• Act as the customer-facing lead on quality holds, deviations, out-of-spec results and complaints, coordinating remotely with QA through investigation and corrective action
• Support customer audits and plant visits (in coordination with on-site teams), and provide documentation — COAs, lot traceability, mock recall records, certification letters
• Escalate and follow through on delivery failures, damaged product and shelf-life concerns with a clear written trail
• Maintain accurate customer, order and project records in our ERP/CRM system
• Report on account health, retention, on-time delivery, and forecast accuracy to leadership

Requirements:

• Several years of experience in account management, client services, customer service or planning within food, beverage, CPG or contract manufacturing
• Working understanding of contract manufacturing economics — MOQs, tolling fees, changeovers, yield and loss
• Comfort with production schedules, BOMs and specifications
• Awareness of food safety and quality fundamentals (HACCP, GMPs, GFSI-scheme audits)
• Strong coordination skills — this role sits between the customer, planning, procurement, QA, R&D and the floor, and has to move work through all of them remotely
• Clear, direct communication, including delivering bad news about schedules and quality holds
• Comfortable discussing price, margin and terms
• Sound judgment around confidential information, including when running competing brands on shared lines
• Proficiency with ERP systems and Excel
• Reliable home office setup and willingness to travel periodically for plant visits, customer meetings, or onboarding trials
• Located in, or willing to be based in, the Southern California or Memphis, TN area preferred
• Direct co-packing or co-manufacturing experience on the plant side
• Familiarity with common beverage production processes and formats
• Beverage-specific technical literacy — brix, pH, TA, carbonation volumes, fill weights, shelf-life and micro testing
• TTB and alcohol regulatory experience, including formula approvals and COLAs, for RTDs, seltzers, beer or wine
• Label and regulatory compliance experience (FDA nutrition labeling, FSMA, organic, kosher)
• Experience supporting SQF or BRC audits
• Additional language proficiency relevant to our workforce or customer base a plus