Category Manager (Alcohol)

Candidate: 192150
Current Position: Category Manager – Packaged Beverages (Alcohol)
Industry: Convenience Retail
Experience: 20+ years
Scope:

Experienced Category Management and Beverage professional with 20+ years of experience supporting and leading category strategy across beverage alcohol, CPG, retail, and multi-unit foodservice environments. The candidate brings direct experience in assortment development, planograms, item maintenance, POS and syndicated data analysis, pricing, promotions, new item launches, vendor coordination, category reporting, and cross-functional merchandising support.

His background is substantially more senior than the position requires, but the functional match is exceptionally strong, particularly given his extensive category-management experience with major retail accounts and his recent experience supporting package-store chains.

Accomplishments:

• Category Management: Extensive experience developing and executing category strategies, assortments, resets, planograms, pricing, and merchandising recommendations.
• Planograms / Space Planning: Direct experience creating and validating planograms and working with JDA/Blue Yonder Space Planning.
• Product & Item Maintenance: Created new-item trackers, managed assortment changes, supported new item launches, and identified distribution opportunities.
• POS & Category Data: Extensive use of POS, syndicated, loyalty, and consumer data to identify opportunities and measure category performance.
• Pricing & Promotions: Developed pricing strategies, analyzed promotional effectiveness, and monitored pricing and promotional performance.
• Vendor Coordination: Extensive experience working with suppliers, distributors, wholesalers, retailers, and internal teams to execute category initiatives.
• New Item Setup / Innovation: Strong track record identifying and executing new-item opportunities, including 4,600+ points of distribution from new-item innovation.
• Retail Execution: Direct experience supporting retail customers with assortment, store-level execution, business reviews, category presentations, and merchandising recommendations.
• Reporting & Presentations: Created JBP decks, category presentations, opportunity trackers, performance reports, and analytical tools for major retail accounts.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Worked across procurement, marketing, operations, suppliers, distributors, sales, and category-management teams.
• Excel / Analytics: Extensive Microsoft Excel experience along with Nielsen/NielsenIQ, IRI, Numerator, MicroStrategy, JDA/Blue Yonder, and retail POS systems.
• Beverage Expertise: Particularly strong beverage knowledge, including Beer, Wine, Spirits, and Cocktails, with WSET certifications.

Haskel Thompson & Associates: Since our founding in 1979, we have been the go-to recruiting firm within Retail, QSR, CPG, Private Equity, and Petroleum industries to bring your organization top-tier talent. With our proprietary and extensive vetting process, you can rest assured that you will be adding highly educated, knowledgeable, and qualified candidates to help grow your organization. For more information about this candidate, please contact Jessica Kennedy at 239-302-3587