Senior Category Manager - Kroger

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Your Opportunity

Are you a highly analytical, customer-focused category management professional who excels at translating complex data into winning business strategies? Do you enjoy uncovering insights, influencing decision-makers, building trusted relationships, and identifying opportunities that drive growth for both customers and brands? If so, Smithfield Foods offers an opportunity to lead category strategy for one of our most important retail partners, Kroger.

As a member of the Kroger Sales Team, the Senior Category Manager serves as the category management leader and strategic advisor for the Kroger business. This individual plays a critical role in strengthening Smithfield's position as a trusted category partner by delivering fact-based recommendations that drive growth across Packaged Meats and Deli categories. Through deep expertise in shopper behavior, consumer trends, category dynamics, retailer strategies, and Kroger-specific data systems, the Senior Category Manager helps identify opportunities that benefit both Kroger and Smithfield.

This role is responsible for leading the analysis and integration of multiple data sources, including Kroger's 84.51 On Demand platform, Stratum, syndicated data, household panel data, assortment and space analytics, shopper insights, market trends, and shipment performance. The Senior Category Manager transforms these insights into actionable recommendations that support assortment optimization, distribution expansion, innovation, merchandising, pricing, promotion, and long-term category growth strategies.

The Senior Category Manager serves as a highly visible customer-facing leader, regularly engaging with Kroger merchants, category leaders, and senior decision-makers while partnering closely with Smithfield Sales Leadership, Marketing, Shopper Marketing, and Insights teams. Through compelling storytelling and strategic business recommendations, this individual influences customer decisions, supports joint business planning initiatives, and helps create mutually beneficial growth opportunities that strengthen long-term retailer partnerships.

Beyond supporting day-to-day business needs, this role is expected to provide thought leadership both internally and externally. The Senior Category Manager serves as a category expert for Smithfield and Kroger, proactively identifying emerging consumer and category trends, developing innovative solutions to business challenges, and shaping the strategic direction of the categories in which Smithfield competes. This individual will also play a key role in advancing category management capabilities across the organization through mentorship, best-practice development, analytical tool enhancement, and knowledge sharing.

Success in this role requires exceptional analytical capabilities, executive-level communication skills, strong business acumen, and the ability to influence decisions through data-driven insights and strategic recommendations. The ideal candidate is equally comfortable conducting complex analyses, developing customer-facing strategies, presenting to senior leadership, and serving as a trusted advisor to both internal stakeholders and external retail partners.

Key responsibilities should include:

* Serve as a trusted category advisor, delivering insights and recommendations that drive category growth, profitability, household penetration, loyalty, and overall shopper experience at Kroger.

* Translate complex data into actionable business recommendations by leveraging Kroger shopper and loyalty data, syndicated POS, household panel, assortment, space, digital, market, and shipment data to identify trends, diagnose performance, uncover root causes, and quantify growth opportunities.

* Demonstrate advanced proficiency in Kroger data ecosystems, including 84.51 On Demand and Stratum, to support fact-based decision making and strategic category recommendations.

* Develop customer-specific insights and strategic recommendations related to assortment, shelving, merchandising, pricing, promotion, and innovation opportunities.

* Evaluate category roles, item productivity, incrementality, transferability, distribution opportunities, pack/price architecture, and shopper demand to optimize assortment and support successful innovation launches.

* Assess pricing and promotional effectiveness, including elasticity, promotion frequency, depth, timing, lift, cannibalization, and ROI, and recommend strategies that balance shopper value, category growth, and profitability.

* Lead category reviews, line reviews, joint business planning support, innovation presentations, and senior-level business updates, creating compelling stories that connect shopper insights to retailer actions and measurable outcomes.

* Partner cross-functionally with Sales, Marketing, Insights, and customers to support portfolio growth, distribution expansion, innovation, and long-term category health.

* Build and maintain scorecards, reporting tools, and performance dashboards that monitor sales, share, distribution, velocity, household penetration, promotional effectiveness, and other key business metrics while proactively identifying risks and opportunities.

* Research and integrate multiple internal and external data sources to identify market opportunities and generate actionable insights.

* Serve as the category expert in customer meetings and presentations, supporting sales teams through category-focused selling strategies and recommendations.

* Lead the enhancement of analytical tools, syndicated data resources, reporting processes, and category management best practices to improve organizational effectiveness and efficiency.

* Act as a catalyst for elevating category management capabilities across the organization by developing standards, sharing best practices, mentoring team members, and serving as a subject matter expert.

* Demonstrate strong communication, leadership, problem-solving, analytical, and strategic thinking skills while influencing cross-functional teams and customer decision makers.

The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by people assigned to this job. They are not intended to be an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties, and skills required of personnel so classified. May perform other duties as assigned.

Qualifications

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals to perform the essential functions.

• Bachelor's Degree from an accredited college or university in Marketing, Business Administration or related field and 8+ years of Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) experience in sales, marketing, category management or trade marketing; or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• MBA Preferred.
• 2+ years of demonstrated experience in team management/development or project leadership is required.
• 5+ years of experience with syndicated data (IRI, Nielsen, etc.), required.
• Demonstrated mastery of category management processes and quantifiable, success as a category captain, validator, etc. Knowledge of assortment tools and planogram software, preferred.
• Must be highly proficient in MS Power Point and Excel, plus syndicated data tools & applications.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills required.
• Ability to prioritize projects and produce high quality and quantity outputs that adds value to the company, required.
• Strong quantitative and analytical skills, required.
• Excellent project management skills.
• Travel 5-10% of the year
• Ability to work well with others in fast paced, dynamic environment.
• Ability to be respectful, approachable and team oriented while building strong working relationships and a positive work environment.

EEO Information

Smithfield is an equal opportunity employer committed to workplace diversity. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age, gender identity, protected veterans status, status as a disabled individual or any other protected group status or non-job characteristic as directed by law.

If you are an individual with a disability and would like to request a reasonable accommodation for any part of the employment selection process, please call us at 757-357-1595.