Senior Food & Beverage Category Lead

Walgreens; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 125,000 - 219,000; Full time

Job summary

Walgreens is seeking a Senior Category Manager to own end-to-end performance for a major Food & Beverage category. You will lead revenue, profits, market share, and long-term growth with a customer-centric strategy and data-driven decision making.

The role requires strategic planning, cross-functional leadership, and strong analytical skills to influence senior leaders and suppliers while achieving ROIC improvement and profitable growth across complex merchandise.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree is required and at least 6 years of experience in two or more of the following areas: retail, procurement/purchasing, merchandising, vendor relations, pharmacy operations, or retail marketing.
• At least 2 years of experience working with P&L concepts – revenue, COGS, gross profit margin, operating expenses and income.
• Experience with customer-centric retailing principles and analytics of customer purchase behavior.
• At least 4 years of experience developing strategic programs in merchandising, vendor relations, and marketing in retail.
• Knowledge of marketing and promotional strategies and methods.
• Intermediate Excel skills and basic PowerPoint/Word skills.
• At least 2 years contributing to financial decisions in the workplace.
• At least 3 years of leadership experience across teams.
• Willing to travel up to 10%.

Responsibilities

• Oversees development and determines merchandising, display, advertising, distribution, packaging and sales plans and programs for highly complex items and multiple merchandise departments.
• Negotiates buying contracts and obtains advantageous pricing; manages day-to-day vendor relationships and growth opportunities.
• Uses market, competitive, and customer perception analyses to set and adjust item price levels.
• Manages category performance by establishing goals and building financial models to predict ROIC.
• Creates and defends planogram category strategies with analytics; delegates analysis tasks.
• Provides leadership with business cases for promotions and productivity forecasts.
• Translates marketing and consumer insights into innovative assortment merchandising decisions to drive returns.
• Leads weekly category meetings with merchant support to manage category performance.
• Understands Walgreens and private brands, including sales forecasts and gross profit levels.

Skills

P&L concepts

Negotiation

Financial modeling

Category management

Excel

PowerPoint

Leadership

Vendor relations

Travel willingness

Education

Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field

Tools

Microsoft Excel

Microsoft PowerPoint

Microsoft Word

Job description

Walgreens is seeking a Senior Category Manager to own end-to-end performance for a major Food & Beverage category. You will lead revenue, profits, market share, and long-term growth with a customer-centric strategy and data-driven decision making.

The role requires strategic planning, cross-functional leadership, and strong analytical skills to influence senior leaders and suppliers while achieving ROIC improvement and profitable growth across complex merchandise.