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ABOUT US
Built for the brands reshaping food.
Thrive Collective Partners is a boutique executive search and talent advisory firm built for food and beverage manufacturers, better-for-you brands, functional food and beverage companies, and food tech innovators. We place the operational, commercial, and supply chain leaders who turn promising brands into scalable businesses — and we do it with the depth and focus that generalist firms can't match.
Ariel Chivalrous Founder, Thrive Collective Partners
What We Do
Retained Search
Our core offering. We run fully retained searches for Director, VP, and C-suite leaders across operations, supply chain, commercial, R&D, and quality — at food manufacturers, CPG brands, and food tech companies. High-touch, fully dedicated, and built around your timeline.
Strategy Sprint
Before you open a search, we help you get the hire right. In four weeks, we scope the role, map the talent landscape, benchmark compensation, and build a search brief your board or PE sponsor can stand behind. A fixed-fee engagement that sets up a faster, smarter search — with or without Thrive running it.
Talent Roadmap
For founders and CEOs navigating multiple leadership hires — post-funding, post-acquisition, or simply outgrowing the founding team. We map your org, sequence your hires, scope the roles, and build a compensation framework across your full leadership team. A six-week engagement that replaces reactive hiring with a plan.
Fractional Talent Advisory
Not ready for a full-time Head of TA? We step in as your strategic recruiting partner — building the systems, structure, and processes to help you hire smarter and faster, without the overhead.
Who We Work With
We work with founders, CEOs, and People leaders at:
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Better-for-you and functional food and beverage brands
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Protein, gut health, and wellness brands
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Food tech innovators — precision fermentation, cultivated ingredients, novel proteins
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Growth-stage and scaling CPG manufacturers
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PE and VC-backed food and beverage companies
Our clients are typically post-seed through Series C, or PE-backed and building the leadership team to execute on their growth mandate.
We know food tech.
Precision fermentation, cultivated ingredients, novel proteins, functional ingredient innovators — the talent market for leadership roles in these companies is thin and highly specialized. Most search firms don't know the difference between a science hire and a commercial hire in this space. We do.
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Whether you're pre-Series A or post-Series B, we can help you find the leaders who bridge the gap between scientific credibility and commercial execution.
Why clients choose Thrive
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We're not a generalist firm with a food and beverage practice. This is all we do.
We know what a VP of Operations actually needs to succeed at a $40M brand versus a $150M one. We know why the same job title means something completely different at a precision fermentation startup versus a scaling CPG manufacturer. And we know how to find the people who won't just look good on paper — but actually show up and deliver in the environment you're building.
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Boutique by design. Dedicated by nature. Trusted because we've earned it.
Rooted in the Industry
Thrive is an active member of the California League of Food Producers (CLFP) and the Northern California Institute of Food Technologists (NCIFT) — two of the most important professional communities in food and beverage manufacturing and innovation on the West Coast. We show up, we stay current, and we're genuinely part of the industry we serve.
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