Meal delivery service Chefs Plate continues to expand its marketing team with the hiring of Kelsey Ingham as brand manager, digital marketing.
A new role at the company, Ingham will be responsible for multi-channel brand marketing programs and integrated marketing communications planning for the at-home meal delivery service, which currently sends 450,000 meal kits to subscribers across Canada every month. Since launching in 2014, much of Chefs Plate’s advertising has relied on digital and social channels, though it did launch its first TV ads earlier this year in an effort to attract more families and continue the growth of its customer base beyond millennials.
Ingham’s mandate includes strategic partnerships, which have also been an important part of the company’s marketing mix this year: in 2017, programs to create special recipes included work with top chefs like Vikram Vij, Ned Bell and Patrick Kriss, as well brands like Stella Artois and Starbucks.
Ingham joins from Kraft Heinz, where she has experience with both brand partnerships and innovation in food. She was most recently a brand manager for the company’s at-home McCafe products through a partnership with McDonald’s Canada, as well as roast, ground and instant home coffee products for Maxwell House and Nabob. She also had a stint on the company’s product innovation team, focusing on brands like Cracker Barrel and Philadelphia.
Chefs Plate lost its VP of marketing Sean Hurley in the summer, but the company has been making other additions to its marketing team this year. Ingham will report to Andrea Nickel, director of brand content, another former Kraft Heinz marketer that joined Chefs Plate this year. In the summer, Chefs Plate hired Sarah Bugeja, a former marketer with Loblaw, Indigo and Walmart, as director of marketing, focused on acquisitions. Stephen Crowhurst, a former design lead at Klick Health, Cheil Canada and InVivo Communications, was hired last month as the company’s creative design lead.