Darian Ahler Email & Phone Number

Detroit, Mi, Us

Vancouver, British Columbia, Ca

I partner with early-stage startups in the food tech industry to guide them from concept to execution, leveraging my extensive experience in product management, hardware development, and new product introduction (NPI). With a generalist approach and a systems-thinking mindset, I work alongside teams to help them achieve product-market fit, while fostering agile development practices to iterate efficiently and scale rapidly.

El Segundo, Ca, Us

As Head of Product Strategy, I bridged between the business and product development teams. On the business side I collaborated with corporations like Chipotle to understand their needs as well as pitched for new business with a number of other companies, leading discovery sessions to help corporations identify and understand their biggest challenges.On the product side, I translated customer needs into product requirements, helping our tech teams design and build with the end-user in mind. We successfully launched Autocado for Chipotle in their test kitchens and won the next phase to build into their existing stores for live operation.

El Segundo, Ca, Us

Oversaw and drove development on a number of progams in the food automation space, including Autocado for Chipotle, Piestro's automated pizza kiosk and Bobacino's automated boba machine. Successfully built, tested and validated highly complex prototypes for functionality, lifecycle testing, food safety certifications and more

El Segundo, Ca, Us

Oversaw all food automation programs while also exploring the market for other key opportunities for automation applications. Partnered with food service companies to understand their needs and design equipment to solve their most complex challenges in the kitchen.

El Segundo, Ca, Us

Managed a team of engineers through a series of early-stage prototypes to automate food preparation processes for boba and pizza. Owned the budget, timeline and project management, ensuring efficient development and cost-effective innovation.

Launched the first automated bubble tea system to serve fresh boba and curated drinks. Led the company in product development to build two interations of our machine that was displayed and experienced by hundreds of people. Raised over $3M via two successful equity crowdfund campaigns to fund development and launch of our machine.

Brooklyn, Ny, Us

Developing fully automated micro-cafes that serve specialty-quality espresso in places it’s never been before

Danville, Virginia, Us

AeroFarms is on a mission to transform agriculture by building and operating environmentally responsible farms throughout the world to enable local production at scale and nourish our communities with safe, nutritious, and delicious food.

M&D Door and Hardware is the premier supplier of hollow metal doors and frames, custom wood doors, aluminum frames, FRP doors, and hardware, on the east coast.

Developed new ideas for innovative and evocative light fixtures.

Designed and engineered industrial food processing equipment. Managed projects and developed design standards to cut cost and lead times.

Donating time to help redesign and prototype key components on the wheelchairs as well as teach designers how to better utilize Solidworks functionality.