The Category and Assortment Director for Sysco Specialty Meat Group is responsible for setting and managing enterprise-wide category and assortment strategies. This role drives execution through cross-functional influence and engagement of all stakeholders. Key responsibilities include establishing and delivering KPIs that support both Sysco and SSMG objectives, optimizing SSMG's customer-facing assortment, developing essential tools and execution tactics, and ensuring proper cross-functional leadership alignment. This role requires significant levels of cross-functional and leadership engagement, experience in building and executing large-scale strategies, and the ability to lead and influence category and assortment initiatives across a wide range of stakeholders. The Category and Assortment Director ensures complete alignment of assortment management objectives with sales, supply chain, digital, operations, and revenue management.
About Sysco Specialty Meat Group: Sysco Specialty Meat Group is a leader in the specialty meat industry, committed to providing high-quality products and innovative solutions to meet the evolving needs of our customers. We strive to drive transformation and growth through strategic category and assortment management.
Duties and Responsibilities:
Develop and execute category and assortment strategic plans and objectives supporting SSMG's overall transformational objectives.
Leverage SSMG size and scale to effectively build category assortments, enhancing consistency and mitigating unnecessary category uniqueness.
Create consistent and unbiased performance metrics to assess category strategy effectiveness.
Design centrally led national/regional category assortments and strategies, complemented by local and customer segment-specific product offerings.
Implement change management strategies to ensure successful execution of assortment strategies at all organizational levels.
Develop and lead efforts to collaborate with USBL partners on assortment stocking optimization using data and insights, supported by growth and go-to-market strategies.
Continuously assess and address evolving process and technology needs to enable effective management of assortment at national, regional, and local levels.
Manage product development, SKU rationalization/standardization, SKU creation, and data/image attribution.
Provide ongoing leadership oversight of numerous projects/initiatives.
Technical Skills and Abilities:
Proven experience in developing and executing large-scale category and assortment strategies.
Strong cross-functional leadership and engagement skills.
Demonstrated ability to lead and influence initiatives across a wide range of stakeholders.
Experience with change management and implementation of strategic plans.
Strong analytical skills with the ability to create and assess performance metrics.
Knowledge of supply chain, digital, operations, and revenue management principles.
High level of business/financial acumen.
Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
Excellent organizational skills
Ability to multi-task, prioritize and manage many ongoing projects at once
Self-motivation with the ability to manage initiatives in a challenging, fast-paced environment.
Education Required:
Bachelor's degree from 4-year college/university or equivalent combination of education/experience in lieu of a degree sufficient
Experience Preferred:
10+ years leadership experience in Category Management or merchandising analytics in retail, specialty, or foodservice industry
