Grocery Category Lead / Manager

Who We Are

Hungryroot is the all-in-one recipe and grocery service. We're here to help people feel their best and make grocery shopping, cooking, and enjoying healthy food easier than ever. So, we're creating the first-of-its-kind food experience that puts people (and the planet) first, built for busy lives and individual needs.

We are a distributed team built on top talent from over 25 states across the U.S. While we have an office in NYC, we support employees creating "offices" wherever they are. We believe in fostering team connection and collaboration across all of our "offices" - so don't expect to be online at 6 am to make a meeting if you're on the West coast. Expect to attend regular team building events, and to be able to work from the beach every once in a while. Expect to be treated like an owner who cares about our common goal, not someone who has to clock in and out of work.

About the Role

We're looking for a highly organized, analytical, and hands on Category Lead to help us manage and expand the grocery category. In this role, you will manage the grocery supply chain including but not limited to vendor performance and on-time delivery, quality, packaging, pricing, overall assortment planning, SKU expansion, and merchandising. You will lead, develop, and maintain key vendor and supplier relationships, identify and deliver cost reduction ideas with suppliers to obtain industry leading solutions and drive results. In this highly critical and impactful role, you will work closely with our food experience and culinary teams to identify, negotiate and on-board new grocery and perishable products that align with Hungryroot's mission to bring healthy, craveable food to our customers.

In this role you will report directly to our VP of Sourcing and join an Operations team responsible for our sourcing, supply chain, and culinary functions. We all fit within Hungryroot's overall team of motivated, smart and kind teammates.

Responsibilities

• Manage, plan, and execute weekly category assortment planning and SKU expansion
• Lead, develop, and maintain vendor and supplier relationships, identify and deliver cost reduction ideas with suppliers to obtain industry leading solutions and drive results
• Source new retail and private label products
• Partner with supply chain planning and fulfillment center teams along with suppliers to ensure timely deliveries and that inventories match demand requirements
• Ensure suppliers meet all federal, state and company regulations and standards for food safety, freshness, sanitation and environmental conditions
• Analyze and drive category growth, performance, and metrics
• Collaborate with culinary and technical services on potential new products, product performance, and key metrics
• Keep informed of food & beverage trends and aggressively identify fresh produce items and opportunities consistent with Hungryroot's values, mission and business model
• Effectively negotiate supplier contracts and pricing to maintain overall margin targets
• Evaluate supplier production plans and supplier capacity to insure product availability that supports Hungryroot's merchandising plans in a high growth environment
• Lead the new product on-boarding process for category to ensure documentation, packaging, and marketing collateral are available in a timely manner to support product launch
• Collaborate with supply chain planning team to develop short, mid and long-term demand forecasts for each vendor/item

Requirements

• 6-7 years of retail grocery and perishable category management, buying, and/or merchandising experience
• Flexible and solution oriented, able to react quickly to ever changing market conditions
• Experience establishing brand/vendor relationships and developing private label products
• Experience with grocery assortment management and merchandising
• Understanding of retail and ecommerce fresh food safety requirements
• Strong communication, organization, and negotiation skills
• Analytically-minded with strong proficiency of Excel / Google Sheets
• Highly collaborative with experience working with cross-functional teams
• A motivated, positive, proactive and transparent attitude
• Passion for grocery and natural foods, healthy living, brightening people's days and Hungryroot's mission
• Netsuite, Airtable, Looker, or ERP systems experience a plus
• Management experience a plus

Perks & Benefits

• Remote Work Optional: Work from home, work from our NYC office, work from anywhere, you decide!
• Competitive compensation + comprehensive Medical, Dental, and Vision benefits
• Unlimited vacation policy
• Monthly Hungryroot credit
• Universal paid parental leave
• 401k
• Commuter benefits
• A working environment filled with passionate, happy, smart people!

#LI-REMOTE

Hungryroot is built on the values of being proactive, positive, and transparent in all that we do. Our mission to help make healthy eating easy, accessible, and joyful is better served by a diverse workplace.

We are a proud Equal Opportunity Employer committed to building an inclusive workplace. We have zero-tolerance for harassment or discrimination. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability.