Job Description

We are Natural Balance Foods, an ambitious young company best known by our n\xc3\xa1kd and TREK brands. We are devoted to making delicious, better for you snacks\xe2\x80\xa6and having some fun along the way too! Founded in 2006, we have grown quickly to now be one of the UK\'s leading Cereal Bar suppliers by offering consumers a healthy, wholefood alternative to the over-processed snack bars that previously dominated the shelves in UK Grocery.

Both n\xc3\xa1kd and TREK are available in all the UK\'s supermarkets, as well as leading convenience, wholesale, digital and foodservice outlets. Our n\xc3\xa1kd bars are \xe2\x80\x9craw\xe2\x80\x9d, made with simple natural and wholesome ingredients like fruits, nuts, oats and seeds; they are free from gluten, wheat and dairy, are vegan, and the majority count towards 1 of your 5-a-day. Our TREK bars are also free from, vegan, and packed with natural, plant-based protein to keep you going!

This is an exciting opportunity to be part of our growing, ambitious company, working alongside the small but expanding team of people here at NBF, as well as our colleagues in the newly founded Lotus Bakeries Natural Foods family of brands that we joined in 2021.

This role requires you to get stuck into detailed data analysis, and then step back to see the big picture and deliver actionable insights. These insights and recommendations then need to be communicated clearly and concisely to both an internal audience, and our leading retail customers.

Key focus areas of the role itself and where you will spend the majority of your time:

• Becoming a business expert in the continuous IRI, Kantar, dunnhumby and Nectar 360 category data we purchase, you will provide an ongoing understanding to the wider business of what is driving both our brands and the competition.
• Making recommendations to both the business and our key retail customers on range, fixture, price and promotions to help unlock future sales growth.
• Building and maintaining strong relationships with key buyers and merchandising contacts in order for them to trust and implement your recommendations.
• Providing analysis and insight for the Commercial team to take directly to retailers.
• Sharing monthly reporting responsibilities to ensure that everyone internally understands the category and to enable the business to make strategic decisions based on data.

Area

Key Responsibilities & Objectives

Customer Collaboration

(you\'ll be allocated specific customers)

• Develop a position as a key independent advisor with your buyers; building and maintaining strong relationships.
• Deliver monthly updates to your accounts and proactively analyse their performance; consistently providing an insightful and challenging view on the category.
• Flag risks and opportunities with distribution/RoS to account managers, and ensure robust recommendations on future promotional strategies and ranging options, including NPD sell-in.
• Input into development and evolution of our top-line Category Vision that we share with our retailers.

Integrating insights into Business Decisions

• Become the go-to person for insight into your allocated areas; a real business expert in historic market data who stays ahead of bigger trends to make proactive recommendations that drive the business forward.
• Contribute analysis and insight for both the marketing and commercial teams, focussing on: ranging, distribution, price and promotions, events, and the NPD and EPD pipeline.

Best-in class team, toolkits and reporting

• Work with our data agencies to ensure that we maintain our data quality.
• Refresh and maintain monthly category reporting, updating them to cover NPD and any other relevant new content.
• Support the teams to make sure the report data is being used and understood by the business in the right way (e.g. through learning lunches and category inductions).

Alongside living our TOP values of Team Spirit, Open Dialogue, and Passion, the most important things we\'re looking for from you are:

• Experience at data analysis - not just churning the numbers but telling the story behind them too. We\'d love someone who can help to train and coach the rest of the business to make the best possible use of our data and insights, so being self-sufficient when it comes to understanding the data will be key.
• Excellent communication skills, in particular presentation skills and story-telling.

• Ability to build and develop great relationships as a trusted expert, both internally at NBF and with our buyers and merchandising contacts at retail customers.
• Outcome focused, results driven.
• Able to prioritise quickly in a fast moving, entrepreneurial environment.
• Happy to roll sleeves up and get stuck in - we are a small category team and business at NBF and we need people who are happy to do everything from churning the data to developing the best way to do things to set ourselves up for future growth.

Other essential requirements for this Category Executive role:

• Previous experience of working in FMCG, ideally in category management or insights, either supplier or agency side.

Experience using data providers like IRI, Kantar, Nielsen, Dunnhumby Shop and/or Nectar 360 SIP.

We\'re looking for a talented Category Executive who can turn our category and shopper data into actionable insight, both within our business and with our retailer customers. This is a great opportunity for someone who is thinking of starting a career in Category Management and has one or two years experience in the FMCG data analysis and insights industry under their belt. If you think you would enjoy discovering valuable insights to unlock growth opportunities for both n\xc3\xa1kd, TREK and our retailers, this could be the role for you.

The Category team sits within the wider commercial function of the business and is at an exciting stage in its development, as not only have we invested a considerable amount in better understanding our n\xc3\xa1kd and TREK shoppers and consumers in the last couple of years, but we are also looking to expand our portfolio into new and exciting categories. You\'ll work closely with the relevant commercial manager for your customer accounts, and also cross-functionally with the brand and shopper marketing teams to help the wider business understand us and our competitors.

Ons aanbod

• De kans om mee te bouwen aan een groeiende, internationale omgeving
• Deel uitmaken van een ambitieus en gedreven team vol talenten
• Veel leer- en groeikansen in de wereld van Category Management
• Nauwe samenwerkingen met verschillende stakeholders in de groep
• Een bedrijfscultuur waar passie, team spirit en open dialoog de belangrijkste drijfveren zijn
• Een aantrekkelijk salarispakket, inclusief extralegale voordelen
• En uiteraard: elke dag koekjes

Lotus Bakeries