Category Manager (Top 4 Grocery) - FMCG Food

With a portfolio of well known food brands, this business is recognised for its award-winning culture, strong employee retention and genuine commitment to sustainability and wellbeing.

The company is now seeking a Category Manager - Grocery to take ownership of the category relationship with a major national supermarket account. This Category Manager role sits at the intersection of customer strategy and commercial delivery, requiring someone who can translate insight into action and influence across multiple levels.

The Role

The Category Manager - Grocery will act as the lead Category Advisor for a key grocery customer, responsible for developing and executing both long-term and short-term category growth plans that deliver mutual value.

• Build and maintain strong partnerships across customer buying, merchandising and commercial teams, using best-in-class category insights to influence ranging, merchandising, promotional strategy and point of purchase activation
• Lead the customer commercial agenda internally, ensuring the voice of the retailer is embedded across business planning cycles and cross-functional meetings
• Develop compelling category reporting, scorecards and presentations for both internal stakeholders and customer-facing engagements
• Manage and maximise the relationship with the customer's bespoke insight platform, becoming an expert user to deliver strategic recommendations
• Support the Sales team with customer-facing meetings, market and customer insights, and training on continuous measures and category storytelling
• Contribute to key commercial growth projects, acting as the customer voice on cross-functional initiatives including seasonal planning and customer sell decks

The Ideal Candidate

The successful Category Manager will bring proven category management experience within FMCG, ideally gained in a supplier or manufacturer environment. The company is looking for someone with strong commercial acumen who can work with complex data sets and translate them into clear, actionable recommendations.

Experience with Nielsen and Kantar is essential, with knowledge of retailer-specific insight platforms highly desirable. Strong Excel skills are a must, as is the ability to influence with gravitas across internal teams and external customers alike.

The ideal candidate will have an understanding of different retail channel dynamics, and a track record of building productive relationships that drive category growth. Strategic thinking, tenacity and excellent communication skills are critical to success in this role

Location:

Berkshire

Package:

£55,000 + £5K Car Allowance + Bonus + Benefits