Location: Hybrid – ideally located near our Manchester, Sheffield or Scottish sites
Shift: Monday - Friday
Salary: Competitive
We have a new opportunity for a Category Manager to join our Marketing team within Finsbury Food Group.
Finsbury Food Group is one of the UK’s leading speciality bakery manufacturers. We continually raise quality, innovation, and operational standards while building long-term, trusted relationships across retail, foodservice, and brand partnerships. Our portfolio spans a wide range of bakery categories—from market-leading retailer own-brand products to beloved licensed and branded ranges—produced across our nationwide network of bakeries.
This is an exciting time to join us. With an ambitious brand growth agenda and a packed pipeline of development activity across our key categories, you’ll play a vital role in elevating brand presence, strengthening customer engagement, and supporting the successful delivery of commercial targets.
To be successful in this role, you will be responsible for translating shopper and market data into actionable insights that drive category growth for FFG and our retail partners. This role combines data analysis, category strategy, and customer-facing leadership to influence ranging, merchandising, pricing, and promotional decisions.
This is what you’ll actually do!
As a Category Manager, you will lead the development, socialisation, and delivery of a dynamic, insight-driven Category Strategy, using analysis of shopper behaviour, market trends, and competitor activity to identify opportunities for growth. You will build and manage strong, influential relationships with key retail partners, while collaborating closely with the Brand Team to integrate category, market, and consumer insights that drive innovation. You will translate multiple data sources into clear, compelling, insight-led stories for both customers and internal stakeholders, and develop a deep understanding of shopper missions, behaviours, and drivers to ensure the voice of the shopper informs decision-making.
In this role, you will lead shopper insight projects to deliver actionable commercial recommendations, while setting and maintaining high performance standards, taking ownership of objectives, and delivering quality outcomes. You will support the development of people and talent through coaching, feedback, and fostering an inclusive, engaging team environment, while demonstrating strong business awareness through understanding the strategic plan, interpreting financial and market data, and recognising the importance of governance and partnerships. You will also support and communicate change effectively, maintaining team focus and resilience, and collaborate across stakeholders by using data-driven insights to influence decisions and build positive, high-performing relationships. You will work closely with brand, sales and development teams.
Ideally this is you!
Previous experience in a Category Management role
Experience working with customers, partners and cross-functional teams
Understanding of category strategy fundamentals
Strong organisation and communication skills
Creative thinker with exceptional attention to detail
Positive, proactive, and eager to learn
Customer and consumer focused with the ability to deliver at pace
Collaborative team player, able to build effective relationships
Capable of managing multiple priorities simultaneously
Comfortable with multiple data sources
What’s in it for you?
Enhanced Maternity & Paternity Leave to allow quality time with your new arrival!
Enhanced Pension Scheme for our employees
Death in Service Benefit
Free Employee Assistance Programme (open to colleagues and their families)
Retail discounts accessible via our Benefits Hub platform!
Refer a Friend Scheme (up to £300 per referral – T&C’s dependent)
Employee Recognition Awards· Extensive Learning & Development opportunities (including opportunities for sponsored professional memberships and our own in-house development course!)
An opportunity to be part of a fantastic, growing organisation. Head over to our LinkedIn page to find out more!
Our vision is to be the leading specialty bakery group in the UK, and we want the best people in place to achieve this. Our continued success is built entirely on the talented people who work here, so employee development is important to us because everyone is a valued member of the team, and we want every individual to have the skills and capabilities to achieve both your own personal goals and our business goals. We want good people to join our company, to help our company continue to go from strength to strength. If this sounds like you, please get in contact to learn more!
Skills Required
- Previous experience in a Category Management role
- Experience working with customers, partners, and cross-functional teams
- Understanding of category strategy fundamentals
- Strong organization and communication skills
- Creative thinking and exceptional attention to detail
- Positive, proactive attitude and willingness to learn
- Customer- and consumer-focused approach with ability to deliver at pace
- Ability to build effective collaborative relationships
- Ability to manage multiple priorities simultaneously
- Comfort working with multiple data sources
What We Do
Finsbury Food Group is a UK commercial bakery manufacturer producing large-scale, high-quality baked goods for supermarket own-label ranges, licensed brands, retail, wholesale, foodservice and hospitality customers. Its nationwide manufacturing network includes Fletchers, Memory Lane Cakes and Nicholas & Harris, while specialist capabilities cover craft, organic, sourdough, gluten-free and other free-from products. The group also operates distribution through its supply-chain and logistics network.
