Food and beverage companies rarely hire in a neutral environment. 

A business may be preparing to add capacity, launch products, enter new markets, or integrate an acquisition. Another may be focused on improving yields, protecting margins, strengthening food safety, reducing turnover, or getting an underperforming plant back under control. 

Both companies need good people. They do not necessarily need the same people. 

That distinction matters as the industry expands. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects food and beverage manufacturing to add about 130,000 jobs from 2024 to 2034, the most of any manufacturing sector. 

At the same time, processors are balancing growth opportunities against cost pressure and the need to get more from existing operations. 

Hiring strategy should reflect which problem the business is actually trying to solve. 

Growth Hiring Is About Building What Comes Next 

Growth changes the experience that becomes valuable. 

A company adding a production line may need an engineering leader who has managed capital projects, commissioned equipment, and increased output without sacrificing quality. A business entering a new category may need research and development, commercialization, regulatory, sales, or supply chain talent with experience taking products from concept to repeatable production. 

The important question is not simply whether someone has held the same title before. It is whether they have successfully operated through the kind of change the company is about to experience. 

Growth-oriented hires may need experience with: 

• Facility expansions or greenfield projects 
• Automation and equipment implementation 
• New product commercialization 
• Increasing production capacity 
• Building teams and functions 
• Acquisitions and integration 

Food Processing’s 2025 capital spending outlook found that major food and beverage companies were still investing in improving and expanding operations even as overall capital budgets moderated. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also projects food and beverage manufacturing output to grow about 22% from 2024 to 2034. 

A company hiring for growth should look for evidence that a candidate has helped create capacity, capability, or revenue that did not exist before. 

Stability Hiring Requires a Different Kind of Operator 

Not every important hire should be expected to transform the organization. 

Sometimes the business needs someone who can make an existing operation work better. 

Plante Moran’s 2026 food and beverage outlook notes that profitability is being shaped by operational discipline, margin clarity, supply chain pressure, and capital strategy. Food Processing also reported that cost control became the top priority in its 2025 manufacturing outlook survey, ranking above food safety for the first time in the survey’s 24-year history. 

For companies focused on stability, the strongest candidate may be someone who has repeatedly improved established operations rather than built new ones. 

That may mean improving: 

• Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and throughput 
• Yield and waste 
• Maintenance performance 
• Food safety and quality systems 
• Employee retention 
• Cost control and accountability 

This work may be less visible than opening a facility or launching a product. It is not less valuable. 

A plant that cannot maintain service levels, quality, staffing, or margins will struggle to support growth. 

Do Not Confuse Change Agents With Strong Leaders 

Companies often say they want a “change agent.” 

Sometimes they do. Other times, what they really need is a leader who can establish consistency. 

A leader who thrives in rapid expansion may become frustrated in an environment where the mandate is standardization and incremental improvement. Someone who excels at improving mature operations may be an outstanding plant manager but the wrong choice to build a new facility from scratch. 

Neither profile is inherently better. 

The hiring team needs to define the operating environment before defining the candidate. 

Ask: 

• Is the role building something new or improving something established? 
• Does the person inherit a strong team, a weak team, or no team? 
• Is success defined by expansion, turnaround, efficiency, or risk reduction? 
• Will the person have capital available or need to work within tight constraints? 
• What must be measurably different 12 months after this person starts? 

Those answers reveal more about the ideal candidate than a generic list of years of experience and technical requirements. 

Growth and Stability Often Happen Together 

Growth and stability are not always separate strategies. 

A company can be adding customers while struggling with labor. It can be launching products while fighting scrap and downtime. It can acquire another business and suddenly need to integrate systems, processes, people, and plants. 

CLA’s 2026 food and beverage mergers and acquisitions outlook described 2025 as a year of selective, disciplined growth and reported that strategic buyers, including private equity-backed companies, accounted for roughly 88% of deal flow. 

An acquisition creates growth on paper. Turning that acquisition into sustainable performance often requires leadership focused on consistency and execution. 

That may mean hiring executives who can set strategy while strengthening operating discipline, or building teams where different leaders bring complementary strengths. 

The mistake is expecting one candidate to be exceptional at everything. 

Build the Search Around the Business Objective 

A job description tells recruiters what a position does. A strong search strategy explains why the position exists now. 

Before beginning a search, food and beverage companies should identify the business outcome connected to the hire. 

For a growth role, that might be opening a new plant, increasing capacity, building a commercialization function, or expanding into a new customer channel. 

For a stability role, it might be reducing turnover, improving first-pass yield, strengthening quality, or reducing unplanned downtime. 

Once the outcome is clear, candidate evaluation becomes more useful. 

Instead of asking, Has this person been a vice president of operations before? the company can ask, Has this person solved the problem we are hiring them to solve? 

That is a much higher hiring standard. 

Why Specialized Food and Beverage Recruiting Matters 

Food and beverage hiring becomes more difficult when companies search by title instead of business need. 

The same plant manager title can describe someone leading a stable operation, turning around a struggling multishift facility, or increasing production at a site that is adding lines, stock keeping units, and headcount. The résumé may look similar. The actual leadership experience can be completely different. 

Miller Resource Group’s food and beverage manufacturing recruiters work across operations, quality, supply chain, research and development, and executive leadership, helping companies identify candidates whose experience matches the situation behind the opening. 

The right hire is not simply the person with the strongest résumé. It is the person whose experience matches what the business needs next. 

Growth requires builders. Stability requires operators. Some situations require both. 

If your food and beverage company is preparing for expansion, strengthening an existing operation, or determining what leadership profile it needs next, Miller Resource Group can help build the search around the outcome that matters.