Category Lead

About Us

Hungryroot is an AI-enabled consumer wellness company. Like a personal assistant for healthy living, we get to know your goals, lifestyle, and budget, and we recommend and deliver healthy groceries, easy recipes and essential supplements for you and your family. It’s the easiest way to eat healthy, achieve your goals, save time, and discover new foods. Founded on the belief that food is the foundation of health, convenience should not mean compromise, and we’re all unique in how we eat and live, Hungryroot is building a future in which healthy living is easy and enjoyable.

We are a distributed team built on top talent from over 28 states across the U.S. While we have a headquarters in New York City, we support employees working from wherever they are based. We believe in fostering team connection and collaboration across all of our employees' locations. Expect to attend regular team-building events and an annual company retreat. 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 strategic, analytical, and hands on Category Lead to help us manage and expand our assortment of Snacks, Sweets, Supplements, and Grains & Pastas. In this role, you will manage the supply chain including but not limited to overall assortment planning, SKU and vendor selection, pricing, packaging, vendor performance, 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 report directly to the Director of Sourcing and work closely with our culinary, analytics, food safety, marketing, and supply chain teams to identify, negotiate and onboard new products that align with our brand values and meets our "Root Standard" for quality, nutrition, ease of preparation, and taste.

Responsibilities

• Partner with the Director of Sourcing and leadership to develop and execute the strategy for the snacks, sweets, supplements, and grains & pastas categories.
• Identify innovative brands and products that fit within our assortment and align with our values of health, convenience, and taste.
• Oversee the end-to-end process for bringing new products into the assortment, from ideation to launch, including vendor negotiations and contract agreements.
• Make data-driven decisions to optimize the assortment, identifying opportunities to improve customer satisfaction and grow category sales and profitability.
• Evaluate the existing assortment for potential cost savings, negotiating with suppliers or switching suppliers to reduce costs while maintaining quality and performance.
• Oversee product reformulations, discontinuations, and other changes to ensure the assortment is continuously evolving to meet customer and business needs.
• Stay informed of food trends and identify opportunities consistent with Hungryroot’s mission and business model.
• Collaborate with the product development lead, culinary team, and leadership to develop and launch innovative private-label products that meet Hungryroot’s high standards.
• Build and maintain strong vendor relationships, ensuring they consistently meet our performance expectations for quality, food safety, cost, and on-time delivery.
• Partner with the food safety team to ensure that suppliers meet all federal, state, and company regulations and standards for food safety, freshness, sanitation, and environmental conditions.
• Partner with supply chain planning and fulfillment center teams, along with suppliers, to ensure timely deliveries and accurate inventory levels that match demand requirements.
• Collaborate with brands and our partnerships team to identify promotional opportunities for brands / products that enhance visibility and drive sales within our ecosystem, while helping us drive marketing revenue

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in category management, buying, and/or merchandising, preferably in eCommerce 
• Strong negotiation, communication, organization, and project management skills
• Experience establishing brand/vendor relationships and developing private label products
• Understanding of retail and ecommerce fresh food safety requirements 
• Analytically-minded with strong proficiency of Excel / Google Sheets 
• Highly collaborative with experience working with cross-functional teams
• Flexible and solution oriented, able to react quickly to ever changing market conditions
• A motivated, positive, proactive and transparent attitude
• Passion for food, health, and wellness, wi