Nutritionist at Tech Startup

Lead NutritionistFoodini | Full-time | Remote (US) | Reports to the COOAbout FoodiniFoodini is a dietary intelligence platform. We give restaurants, hotels, stadiums, and food-service operators ingredient-level control over their menu data so guests with allergies and dietary needs know exactly what is safe to eat, and so operators can meet a fast-moving set of allergen and nutrition disclosure laws.Our engine, DietaryAI, pulls menu, recipe, and ingredient data straight out of the inventory and recipe systems operators already run, including CrunchTime, Restaurant365, MarginEdge, Craftable, Meez, and COGS-Well. Every menu is then verified by a registered dietitian before it reaches a guest. That combination, AI at the ingredient level with dietitians in the loop, is the solution the restaurant industry needs to meet the new wave of regulation, along with the preferences of today's consumer.We work with Hungry Howie's, Compass Group, Marriott, José Andrés Group, Bartaco, J. Alexander's, Bluestone Lane, Saxbys, Sweetfin, and Areas USA, and we launched the first allergen-filtered concession ordering at a Major League Baseball stadium. Fast Company named us #9 in its 2026 Most Innovative Companies list for Restaurants, Dining & Food Services. We are headquartered in Los Angeles with a global team.The roleWe are hiring a Lead Nutritionist to oversee nutrition calculation at Foodini, guide our team of dietitians, and set the standards behind what operators can say about their menus.Our depth today is in allergens. Nutrition is the next layer, and we are not building it the traditional way.The traditional way is one recipe at a time. A dietitian hand-keys ingredients into a database, resolves each one against a reference entry, applies yield and retention factors from a table, and produces a static number. It takes weeks per menu, it costs real money, and it is stale the moment a supplier changes a formulation or a chef swaps an ingredient. Most operators end up with a PDF that was accurate eighteen months ago.We are building the other version. Nutrition calculated from the recipe and inventory data already flowing out of an operator's back-of-house systems, matched and modeled by DietaryAI at the ingredient level, verified by our dietitians, and recalculated when the underlying data changes rather than once a year. The AI does the matching, the modeling, and the scale. Your team does the judgment, the standards, and the verification that makes the output defensible.The part nobody has built yetNutrition data has always been treated as an obligation, something a restaurant publishes because a regulator says it must. It is also demand data, and that is the half of this job we are most excited about.Guests are ordering for protein. Guests on GLP-1 medications want smaller portions, more protein, and more fiber, and they are a fast-growing share of every dining room in the country. Operators are already selling items that fit what those guests want, and they have no way to identify them, let alone market them. The nutrition data sits in a compliance PDF while the menu says nothing.Once nutrition is calculated at the ingredient level across an entire menu, that changes. You define what qualifies: the threshold that makes an item high protein, the standard Foodini will stand behind for GLP-1 friendly, where FDA nutrient content claim rules govern the language and where we are setting the definition ourselves because no one has. Those standards then drive how operators merchandise their menus.No one in this industry has done this. Getting it right is a nutrition problem and a commercial one at the same time, and you would own both halves.What you will doOwn Foodini's nutritional analysis methodology: reference database selection, ingredient matching standards, yield and retention factors, and cooking method adjustmentsSet direction for our dietitian team and act as the technical authority they check their work againstDefine the nutrition-based attributes Foodini stands behind, including high protein and GLP-1 friendly, and the thresholds, evidence, and claim language behind each oneWork side by side with engineering to encode that methodology into DietaryAI, and to decide where automated calculation is trustworthy and where it must escalate to a humanSet the confidence thresholds and QA process that catch errors before a client or a guest ever sees them, and own accuracy as a measurable standardDefine how nutrition data stays current as recipes, suppliers, and inventory records changeMake sure our outputs meet FDA menu labeling requirements, nutrient content claim rules, and state allergen disclosure laws, including California SB-68Work with client-facing teams during onboarding, when a brand's recipe data is messy and someone has to make the right callServe as Foodini's nutrition voice with clients, partners, and in industry conversationsWhat you bringRegistered Dietitian (RD/RDN) credential, or an equivalent degree in nutrition or food science with directly comparable analysis experienceReal experience calculating nutrition for restaurant or food-service menus, not just clinical or consumer work. You have handled recipes with vague specs, regional variation, and suppliers who change formulations without telling anyoneWorking knowledge of FDA menu labeling requirements and nutrient analysis software such as Genesis R&D, Nutritionix, or ESHA. You know what those tools do well and where they run out of roadA read on where consumer nutrition is actually heading, from GLP-1 medications to protein and fiber demand, and the judgment to tell a durable shift from a fadGenuine interest in what AI can and cannot do here. You do not need to have built a model, but you should want to spend your time teaching a system your judgment instead of repeating it by handComfort with data at scale: spreadsheets with tens of thousands of rows, structured data, and the instinct to ask where a number came fromJudgment about accuracy. You know where published data is reliable, where it is not, and how to document the differenceReadiness to guide other dietitians and set standards they work to. Formal management experience is welcome but not requiredNice to haveExperience with back-of-house systems like CrunchTime, Restaurant365, MarginEdge, Craftable, or MeezSQL, Python, or a similar tool you use to check your own workExperience building nutrition data for enterprise or multi-unit brandsMenu development, culinary R&D, or marketing experience alongside the analysis workFamiliarity with allergen compliance alongside nutritionWhy this roleMenu nutrition information today is mostly a PDF nobody can use, produced by a process that has not meaningfully changed in twenty years. The people who need it most, guests managing allergies, celiac disease, diabetes, or specific nutritional targets, are the ones least served by it.This is a chance to rebuild that process rather than run it, and then to do something with the output the industry has never done. The methodology you set becomes the platform's methodology across every operator we serve. The standards you write for what counts as high protein or GLP-1 friendly become how thousands of menu items get presented to guests. Very few nutrition roles anywhere let you set a definition and see it reach that many tables.Compensation and logisticsSalary range: $60,000 to $80,000EquityFull-time, remote within the USOccasional travel for client onboarding and industry eventsHow to applySend a resume and a short note to info@getfoodini.com telling us about a menu nutrition project you worked on and one thing about it that was harder than it looked.