Strategic Category Manager - 12 month Fixed Term Contract in Crawley

Location: Gatwick (Hybrid working – approx. 2 days a week in the office)

Some of our other fantastic benefits:

• Potential, discretionary annual bonus
• Generous pension scheme – up to 12% contribution from Nestlé
• 12 flexible days on top of 25‑day holiday entitlement

Although this is a full‑time temporary opportunity, please speak to us about what flexibility means to you as we are always open to discuss individual’s flexible working needs – don’t let this stop you from applying.

Position Summary

Nestlé Professional (“NP”) is our Business‑to‑Business foodservice arm, which specialises in the Out of Home solutions market. The unrivalled portfolio of NP includes food brands such as MAGGI and renowned coffee brands including ‘We Proudly Serve’ STARBUCKS and NESCAFE. NP operates successfully in an enormous marketplace and is an ambitious growth driver for Nestlé. The team’s aim is to unlock category growth for NP and its partners, through its range of branded, creative food and beverage solutions.

We have a fantastic opportunity to join our Nestlé Professional Coffee business within the Commercial Development Team (CDT) as Strategic Category Manager, reporting directly to the Head of Beverages. This is an exciting commercial role which will leverage the successful candidate’s passion to land the commercial category, channel and customer strategies across our coffee portfolio.

Your impact

As part of the Beverages team, you will be responsible for playing your role in the delivery of the coffee category growth plan. Working closely with Marketing and your Sales colleagues, you will develop commercial strategies to deliver profitable market share growth for our brands through our customers and priority channels. Cross‑functional working is a vital part of this role. You will work closely with the Coffee Sales team to problem‑solve and develop new exciting proposals for our customers and deliver the commercial plan through the MBP process. Equally, you will collaborate with the Marketing team to shape new propositions for the longer‑term plan and model with our supply and factory teams to identify how they will help us achieve our goals. You will also work with the Finance Co‑pilots to manage a profitable portfolio and channel mix, be the custodian of trade spend and optimise it for a RIG‑led growth. You will also play a role in executing our Category Growth Strategy across channels and customers – an open mind and ability to influence stakeholders regularly is a key skill. You will lead the Strategic Revenue Management for Core Coffee, covering pricing strategy and pack‑price architecture.

Your ingredients for success

To be successful you will have developed critical experience in customer management and managed complex agendas across multiple customers, channels and brands whilst engaging multiple stakeholders. In these roles, you will have shown an ability to relate to different people and perspectives and have a strong level of emotional intelligence. You will also:

• Be motivated to add to the growing and strengthening culture we are creating in the Nestlé Professional Team where people are inspired by their leaders and feel comfortable to express their views without fear of negative consequences.
• Have an ability to stand back from situations and see the bigger picture as well as an analytical approach to drive insight and be able to transform data into compelling stories.
• Understand the importance of working toward a triple win – Customer, Channel, Nestlé.
• Find ways to fully exploit the amazing resources and brand strength we enjoy in coffee.

What you need to know

We will be considering candidates as they apply and we will occasionally close job advertisements early in the event we receive sufficient applications, so please don’t delay in submitting your application. At Nestlé, our values are rooted in respect and we believe that embracing diversity and fostering an inclusive environment allows everyone to reach their full potential and drives innovative thinking. We strongly encourage applications from individuals of all gender identities, ethnic backgrounds, those with disabilities, parents, carers and members of the LGBT+ community. Please let us know if we can provide accommodations to ensure your full participation in the application process.