Category Manager – Butchery

Category Manager – Butchery  

Ko wai mātou – About us 

Kia ora. We’re Foodies. You know New World, PAK’nSAVE and Four Square right? That’s us! With 300+ stores and over 24,000 Foodies across Te Ika‑a‑Māui, our North Island Co‑op has the privilege of helping New Zealanders get more out of life. Locally owned, we reflect the communities we serve, and we celebrate our people – our taonga – every day for being uniquely them. 

Our Merchandise team works with supplier partners and store teams on category ranging, buying, pricing and promotions so we can get the right products on the right shelves at the right time for our customers. 

Te Tūranga – About the role 

We’re looking for a Category Manager – Butchery (Chicken) to lift performance across one of our most important fresh categories. 

This is a hands-on, commercially sharp role where success is defined by results. You’ll own category performance end-to-end, strengthening supplier accountability, improving promotional effectiveness, and ensuring our strategies land in-store. 

You’ll bring a strong performance lens, using data, insight and commercial judgement to identify gaps, take action, and drive better outcomes - at pace. 

Working closely with the Business Manager, store teams, suppliers and cross-functional partners, you’ll play a key role in shifting the category from execution-led to performance-led. 

Key responsibilities include: 

• Own and drive category performance across chicken, delivering improvements in sales, margin and execution 

• Lead promotional planning and execution, ensuring ROI and impact in-store 

• Manage supplier contracts to ensure full value is delivered in practice, not just on paper 

• Build strong, credible supplier relationships while driving commercial outcomes 

• Use data and reporting to identify performance gaps and take action 

• Improve in-store execution by closing the gap between support centre plans and store delivery 

• Challenge ways of working to simplify, improve and increase pace of decision-making 

• Influence across merchandising, stores and supply teams to drive better outcomes 

Ngā painga – What we offer 

We’re committed to providing awesome experiences for our people, including a range of benefits such as: 

• Free carparking – over 1,000 carparks including free EV charging 

• Onsite café with subsidised meals, mini‑mart, and 5% discount at our retail stores 

• Southern cross health insurance  

• Flexible working options, a day off on your birthday 

• In‑house learning and development programmes, flu vaccinations, and social network groups (we call them Tribes) 

He kōrero mōu – About you 

You’re someone who thrives on driving performance and holding others (and yourself) to account. 

You’re commercially practical, fast-moving, and confident challenging both suppliers and internal teams to get better outcomes.  

You bring energy, pace and a bias toward action, backed by strong use of data and insight. 

Ideally, you’ll bring: 

• Proven experience improving category or commercial performance (FMCG/fresh/retail) 

• Strong experience managing supplier performance and/or contracts 

• Confidence working with pricing, promotions and commercial levers 

• Ability to build and use reporting to identify issues and drive action 

• Strong understanding of store environments and execution realities 

• The ability to influence without authority and drive outcomes across teams 

• A proactive, challenge-oriented mindset with a focus on results over process 

Experience awesome. Achieve awesome. Be awesomely you.  

We’re proud to have a focus on Diversity & Inclusion here at Foodies and welcome courageous behaviour, encourage togetherness, inspire our people to be their best selves in our Foodies whānau.  

If you require accessibility support to ensure you can fairly access our recruitment process, please reach out to  [email protected].  Accessibility support could include, interview location, sign language interpreter, assistive technology.