Category Manager at Community Coffee Company, LLC

Department:  Finance and Accounting

Reports To:  Assoc Director Retail & Consumer Insights

Travel Required: 20%

Workplace Type: On-site

Why Join Community Coffee?

Community Coffee Company is the #1 family-owned and operated retail coffee brand in America.  Rooted in family and tradition, yet always looking to the future, you can expect a fast-paced environment that is both challenging and rewarding. Join us and make your passion your profession!

Position Overview

As the Category Manager, you will spearhead the creation and management of category management deliverables across the Food, Drug, Mass, Club, and Discount (FDMCD) channels. You will play a pivotal role in informing and executing our Sales & Marketing go-to-market strategies, focusing on achieving net sales, margin, profit, and market share objectives. Leveraging your expertise, you will extract actionable, volume-driving insights from diverse market intelligence resources, positioning yourself as the in-house authority on category management—including category, channel, shopper, and consumer insights.

In this role, you will provide essential support for customer development, retail execution, and competitive response initiatives. You will also be responsible for measuring and reporting on market performance, drawing data-driven conclusions, and recommending strategic actions to enhance business outcomes.

Function Related Activities/Key Responsibilities

Retailer-Specific Insights:

• Understand and track trends at assigned retailers, including ongoing sales performance, competitive promotional activity, and shifts in shelf placement.
• Conduct thorough root cause analysis to determine what is driving or hindering sales performance at the retailer.
• Identify key factors influencing sales, including pricing, promotions, product assortment, and distribution.
• Measure the impact of competitive promotions and identify strategic lessons to enhance our category performance.
• Track distribution and lift from display and feature activities, as well as shelf changes such as new products or adjustments in facings and location.
• Analyze channel shifting and its impact on retailer performance.

Promotional Analysis and Strategy:

• Track promotion period results and collaborate with Revenue Growth Management (RGM) to conduct ROI analysis using internal data and costs.
• Conduct analyses forecasting various promotional price points, timings, and strategies, passing insights to RGM for profitability assessments and approvals.

Shopper and Space Analytics:

• Understand the nuances of the retailer’s shopper behavior, conducting leakage and N/L/R (new, lost, retained) analyses.
• Conduct space-to-sales analyses to ensure optimal facings and reduce out-of-stock occurrences.
• Proactively identify low-performing items and propose item swaps to optimize category performance.

Planogram and Category Captaincy:

• Where category captaincy is held, update and manage planograms to reflect optimal shelf layouts; where captaincy is not held, oversee outsourced planogram adjustments and communicate necessary changes.
• Identify opportunities to enhance category performance through strategic partnerships with Sales and Commercialization teams.

Retailer-Specific Presentations and Reviews:

• Build retailer-specific category review decks, leveraging national category insights and employing a storytelling approach to advocate for proposed strategies (e.g., promotions, shelf placement, new items).
• Quantify opportunities for the retailer, demonstrating how proposed actions will drive their category sales growth.
• Track the success of accepted opportunities and adjust strategies based on performance outcomes.

Communication and Reporting:

• Create monthly or quarterly one-pagers for National Account Managers (NAMs) to facilitate conversations during buyer check-ins.
• Coordinate the creation of presentations for Joint Business Planning (JBP) or Top-to-Top meetings.
• Act as the super user for Retailer gateways, managing and leveraging these tools to optimize category management efforts.

Position Requirements

• Bachelor’s in Business, Marketing, Finance, Economics, Mathematics or related field from a four-year college or university required. Will consider experience in lieu of education.
• 3+ years of experience leading/executing the category management discipline for a CPG brand with national accounts across multiple FDMCD channels.  CPG Center Store Grocery Food and/or Beverage category experience preferred.
• CPG Sales or Marketing experience preferred.
• Experience using consumption reporting tools - syndicated data (IRI and/or Nielsen, Household Panel), customer-specific (Retail Link, Kroger 8451, other) and research (Mintel, Kantar, GfK, etc.). 
• Experience with Community Coffee, even if unrelated, may fulfill experience requirements at the discretion of the hiring manager with approval from Human Resources
• Must be an expert in knowledge and application of category management fundamentals and best practices.
• Highly proficient in Excel, PowerPoint and Word
• Experience with advanced segmentation tools (ShopperSights, Spectra PRIZM), and shelf space management software (Apollo, JDA/ProSpace, Spaceman) is preferred.

What We’re Looking For

• Must possess effective leadership, communication, collaboration and organization skills with work history showing initiative, attention to detail and results orientation.
• Must be able to grow organizational understanding and adoption through proactive, consultative teaching/coaching.
• Must have well developed presentation build, delivery and story-telling skills.
• Strong analytical ability
• Team oriented
• Customer focus

Physical Demands/Work Environment

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to do the following:

• Frequently required to sit; use hands to finger, handle or feel objects, tools or controls and talk or hear.
• Occasionally required to stand; walk, reach with hands and arms, stoop, kneel, crouch or crawl.
• Occasionally lift and/or move up to 10 lbs; 
• Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, color vision, peripheral vision, depth perception and ability to adjust focus.
• Office Environment: Most of the dutiesof this position will be performed inside an office environment.  The noise level in the work environment is usually quiet