Category Manager - Whole Foods

Employment Type: Full-Time

Position Overview

This role is for an experienced retail sales category management professional eager to thrive at a dynamic, rapidly evolving company. The ideal candidate has a deep understanding of Whole Foods stores and shoppers, is well-versed in the 4 P's (Product, Price, Place, Promotion), and can easily run analyses covering any of them. This position requires a strategic thinker who uses data to create insights and provide recommendations that drive category growth. The candidate should be curious, consistently reviewing the business of the category they own, and comfortable building tools in Excel as well as presenting high-impact insights to diverse audiences. A belief in the mission of advancing childhood nutrition is essential.

Responsibilities

• Provide insight analysis around strategic business questions posed by Whole Foods Category Merchants, delivering data-driven PowerPoint presentations.
• Own quarterly state-of-the-business category health analysis, including in-depth dives into shopper behavior, dynamic metrics, and performance.
• Create monthly and quarterly scorecards and assortment performance tracking.
• Run bi-annual leakage, share of wallet, and demographics reporting.
• Conduct store visits to review competitive sets and merchandising techniques.
• Consistently review the assigned business agnostically to provide ad hoc insights and recommendations.
• Provide category analytics to inform the Core planogram, ensuring alignment with financial and assortment needs according to category strategy.
• Collaborate with Category Merchants to suggest improvements to the current most common planogramogram (POG).
• Leverage market structure insights to develop flow and adjacencies.
• Utilize velocity and incrementality data from assortment studies to maximize revenue volume for POG and limit cannibalization.
• Partner with category merchants in meetings with Merch Pres, presenting the approved most common POG.
• Engage in omni-channel sales and shopper data projects, understanding performance and behavior changes for online and in-store shopping.
• Provide ongoing category promotional analytics support.
• Support Exclusive Brands (private label) analytics with the approval of the category merchant.
• Attend business reviews, category round kick-offs, and ideation/innovation meetings.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in business or a related field.
• 6-8+ years of experience in Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) Category Management.
• 3+ years of experience working with Whole Foods.
• Expert knowledge of WFM Nielsen portals.
• Expert knowledge of Microsoft Suite (Outlook, Excel) and other professional platforms (Slack).
• Experience with planogram drawing software.
• Experience with both scan and panel data.
• Exceptional organizational, communication, and time management skills.
• Extremely strong analytical skills.
• A growth mindset and flexibility to reprioritize projects as needed.
• A genuine passion for the mission.