Food Buyer

Our client is looking for a Buyer to join their category team to support the end-to-end process across your designated category. The Buyer will be handling various suppliers and will be delivering improvements within cost and quality. The ideal Buyer willneed to come from a food/retail/hospitality buying background and will be extremely organised. Experience within public sector is preferred but not essential.

This role will be a 50/50 hybrid role.

**Key Responsibilities for the Developer**:

- You will support the Category Manager to develop and execute a long-term category strategy to deliver sustainable improvements in terms of cost, quality, service and innovation, in collaboration with the procurement team & other relevant business stakeholders
- Identifying potential suppliers, visiting, and meeting existing suppliers, building, and maintaining relationships
- You will understand key cost drivers, industry trends and standard methodologies to design/implement the category strategy for all subcategories in the meat and poultry categories
- Develop and maintain long term pricing mechanisms across our meat and poultry supply base to drive sustainable competitive advantage
- You will support our supply chain team to ensure on -time direct supply and supply via distributor aligned to SLA's
- Ensure your product range is compliant to food safety regulations & CSR requirements, assuring high quality standards always
- You will be accountable for your category spend
- Evaluating bids with the sourcing team and making recommendations based on commercial, technical, supply and quality requirements, using your category expertise and knowledge
- You will communicate industry trends across the business
- Regularly review supplier performance to support category growth
- Manage category related queries from internal and external stakeholders
- Support our sales and bid teams with content

**Skills Required for the Developer**:

- Results Oriented - comfortable delivering against bold and stretching targets
- Experience in a buying role within food/retail/hospitality.
- Competent with procurement systems, ideally having used these in current/previous employment
- Demonstrated ability to develop credible business relationships