David Ellegant Email & Phone Number

Morton Grove, Il, Us

Morton Grove, Il, Us

Personal chef service providing clients with foods that meet their tastes, dietary preferences, and nutritional requirements. Focused on removing processed foods and using nutritional cooking principles to create greater dietary balance. Experience cooking for people with food allergies, lactose intolerance, and those undergoing medical treatments such as chemotherapy. Menu planning and meal prep, along with shopping and kitchen/pantry management (cleaning, organizing, maintaining) services are available. Flexible hours to accommodate busy individuals and families.Also offering family or buffet style meals for smaller events (10 people or less). ServSafe Sanitation Manager, ServSafe Allergen, & ServSafe Alcohol (IL BASSET) certified. Maintains an active Food Liability Policy.

The Prospect is a Argentinian and Italian inspired fine-dining restaurant featuring open fire cooking, in-house dry aged meats, and scratch made pasta. Cross trained on all stations, I was responsible for food preparation and line cooking with a focus on sauté and pasta.

Arlington Heights, Illinois, Us

Scratchboard Kitchen is an upscale casual restaurant focusing on local/regional ingredients and scratch cooking.Responsible for cooking on all line stations (griddle/grill, sauté, cold), plating, food preparation, and sanitation.

Itasca, Illinois, Us

As a senior manager I was responsible for the day to day management of my assigned categories as well as leading the Assoc. Cat. Mgr. for condiments and a Grocery Analyst. While in this position I re-introduced a struggling organic spice and seasoning program, expanding participation and growing sales. I also right-sized our candy assortment with a focus on streamlining products across brands and increasing seasonal program participation. And I worked closely with the oils sourcing manager on major transitions for the cooking oil and olive oil categories to maintain our competitive edge over national brands.

Itasca, Illinois, Us

As a senior manager I was responsible for leading category management within the Frozen Department. I also had day to day responsibilities for the ice cream, frozen novelty, frozen dessert, frozen fruit, and frozen pasta categories. In addition to my expanded role within the Frozen Dept., I was part of multiple teams and projects focusing on commercialization process improvement, brand strategy, and business process improvement. I've also been fortunate to lead teams that brought award winning own brand products to market. In 2020 Culinary Tours brand Vanilla with Forest Fruit Sorbet Fusion Bar took the top spot in the Ice Cream & Frozen Novelties category at the 2020 PLMA Salute to Excellence Awards. Also in 2020, Store Brands magazine awarded their Frozen Foods Silver and Bronze medals to Culinary Tours Fusion Bars and Culinary Tours Sorbetto respectively.

Itasca, Illinois, Us

Topco is a national cooperative of over 50 member-owners from the grocery retail and wholesale industries focused on providing Own Brand solutions. I had responsibility for the Ice Cream, Novelty, and Frozen Dessert categories worth about $130 million annually. My duties included creating category business plans, leading the new product development process, managing pricing and margin, determining merchandise assortment, identifying suppliers for new items, working with existing suppliers on all issues related to pricing and supply chain, conducting bids for both Topco and member brands, and a myriad of other tasks related to the development and growth of categories within our member-owners. I introduced the flagship items that anchored a new brand launch across Center Store. Being the first to market under our new Culinary Tours brand, these items were the face of the brand to our members and accounted for 20% of brand sales in the first year. I also overhauled the ice cream and novelty pricing process, reinvigorated the new item/innovation pipeline for all my categories, increased member participation in the categories I managed, and had a positive impact both culturally and financially on the Frozen Dept. and the organization as a whole.

Rosemont, Il, Us

Project and category management within the Dairy category designed to drive proper assortment, sales and profitability. This was achieved through a combination of strategic vendor alignment, new product development, category analysis, pricing strategies, commodity management, and continuously increasing my knowledge and skill base. I've worked on or led the development of US Foods Exclusive Brand (EB) offerings within my categories, placing emphasis on new and innovative products to drive customer loyalty. Much of this work led to highly successful product launches in our unique, industry changing Scoop magazine including Chef's Line Ice Cream, the first own brand super premium ice cream launched in foodservice. With my retail and club store history I was also heavily involved with the Chef'Store cash and carry format, working on product assortments and pricing for my categories. While in this role I attended National Egg Quality School in 2012 and was a participant in the American Egg Board Technology Advisory Council Meeting in 2014 as the only representative from the distribution industry.

Rosemont, Il, Us

One of two Specialists in the Bakery category I ran the frozen bread and cookie categories. In this position I led two high exposure RFPs, bagels and cookie dough, which resulted in new supplier partnerships along with improved products and profitability. I managed the private label product development process launching highly successful items such as our pretzel and brioche buns, as well as multiple items within in each of the first three editions of our Scoop Magazine (a concept developed by US Foods for launching new, innovative, and unique concepts to foodservice distribution). To drive case volume and increased profitability I worked with our vendor partners planning promotional activities and conducted periodic pricing reviews of categories to determine opportunity gaps.

Management of retail and foodservice programs for a broad line distributor supplying a customer base of grocery, convenience, and retail drug stores as well as 5 company owned and operated Cash and Carry stores. Responsibility for the selection, pricing, purchasing, inventory, and advertising of thousands of items. As a leading distributor for the independent grocery and convenience store channels, and the premier Hispanic distributor in our market, I had tremendous exposure to a variety of food categories and items. As the primary refrigerated and frozen distributor for Walgreens in IL and Northwest IN at the time, I worked on their Chicago area "desert store" project which helped bring expanded grocery sections to underserved communities.Layed off in December 2009 as part of a seniority based staff reduction.

Certificate Professional Cookery

Bachelor'S, Organizational Management

Paramedic Program Certificate Of Completion, Emergency Medical Technology/Technician (Emt Paramedic)