Category Manager

Ref: AS6136196

London, England

£60,000

• Permanent
• Food And Beverage Category Growth
• Supplier Negotiation
• Insight-Led Buying

About the candidate

An experienced Category Manager with a strong background across food and beverage, covering impulse food and drink, ready-to-eat and snack categories. They bring a commercial, data-led approach to range curation, supplier partnerships and promotional planning, with a clear focus on improving performance and delivering customer-focused category growth.

They are a high-energy self-starter who works well in fast-paced retail and distribution environments. With strong stakeholder management and project delivery skills, they are confident working cross-functionally with marketing, merchandising, finance and logistics teams to turn insight into action.

What makes them great?

• Strong commercial impact: Delivered a 20% cost reduction through supplier negotiations while improving product quality across impulse food and drink ranges.
• Proven sales growth: Worked with marketing and merchandising teams to launch promotional activity that increased sales by 30% over six months.
• Margin and efficiency focus: Built supplier relationships that improved delivery efficiency and supported a 15% increase in gross margins across ready-to-eat and snack products.

Areas of expertise

• Category strategy and range management: Skilled in curating food and drink ranges that reflect customer demand, market trends and commercial priorities.
• Supplier negotiation and relationship management: Experienced in building strong supplier partnerships, improving quality, delivery performance and commercial terms.
• Insight-led decision making: Confident using market research, competitor analysis and category data to support buying, inventory and promotional decisions.