National Account Manager (6 month FTC)

Founded in 2003, Wasabi's vision is to lovingly create and serve delicious Asian food for a busy nation. Wasabi now has 42 thriving restaurants across London and major UK cities and 4 in New York. In 2019, we introduced Wasabi Home Bento, launching exclusively in Sainsbury's. Building on that success, the grocery business broadened its reach to Tesco in September 2022, followed by exciting launches in Co-op and Morrisons in 2024. Wasabi grocery has seen phenomenal growth and is now a £62m RSV brand, proudly standing as the No. 2 chilled ready-meal brand in the market.

The Role: This role will be responsible for leading commercial relationships with our key national retail customers. You will be responsible for driving sales growth, profitability, and category performance through strategic account planning, negotiation, and execution. You will ensure that the brand and commercial strategies are effectively delivered while maximizing distribution, visibility, and promotional impact.

Key Responsibilities:

• Manage and grow strategic relationships with our national retail accounts.
• Develop and execute joint business plans (JBPs), including annual negotiations, pricing, and trade terms.
• Ensure that all data, information, and admin required to support the customer relationship is rigorously managed.
• Lead business reviews with your customers to track performance and identify new opportunities.
• Grow your network and engagement across retail customer teams.
• P&L management – deliver sales, volume and margin targets for your customers.
• Ownership of the commercial P&L for your customer, ensuring budgets are met.
• Manage investment budgets ensuring maximum ROI.
• Drive distribution gains, shelf visibility, and compliance with agreed plans.
• Identify and action growth opportunities and risk mitigation strategies.
• Undertake sales analysis and reporting for your accounts using internal systems, customer data, and category insight tools.
• Build accurate bottom-up customer forecasts for review in internal S&OP process.
• Align customer plans with internal commercial and brand strategies.
• Work closely with marketing, category, supply chain, and finance teams to ensure strong customer execution.
• Share insights on customer needs, competitor activity, and category trends.
• Be the commercial lead on ad hoc assigned projects.
• Support in the evolution and improvement of key business processes and control documents.
• Embed Seiyaku ESG commitments into customer joint business plans.
• Use sales, insight and category data to build compelling stories for customers.
• Monitor market performance, promotional activity, and category dynamics.
• Recommend improvements to product mix, pricing, and promotional strategy.

Our Requirements:

• Proven experience managing branded FMCG grocery accounts.
• Commercially astute with a good understanding of supporting functions.
• Ability to build strong business relationships and mutually profitable business solutions.
• Adaptable and agile with excellent organisation and project management skills.
• Ability to use data and insights to solve problems and identify opportunities.
• Pro-active with a growth-oriented mindset.
• Experience in short shelf life chilled highly desirable.
• Experience and confidence using Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint.

In return we provide:

• A great working environment.
• Pension scheme.
• Target Bonus.
• Refer A Friend Scheme.
• Free Sushi or hot food (vegan options available).
• 50% discount in our Branches.
• Employee Assistant Programme.
• Help@Hand (a service providing health and wellbeing support).
• Long Service Awards.
• Wagestream - a financial wellbeing benefit.
• Life Assurance.
• Electric Vehicle Scheme through Octopus.
• Cycle To Work.
• Free on-site parking.
• A variety of discounts through Perkbox.
• The opportunity to develop your skills within a growing company.

Our people make us who we are. If you're looking for an exciting challenge, please apply today as we can't wait to hear from you.