Lotus Natural Foods, the healthy snacking division of Lotus Bakeries and a portfolio of 5 incredible brands; BEAR, TREK, nakd. Kiddylicious and Peter’s Yard, all having their own distinct proposition and role within our business.

We have great ambitions for all our brands, ensuring that as a business we deliver sustainable growth over the long-term. We believe that taste and quality are 100% of what underpins us as brand leaders within our categories, and what pulls us apart from our competitors. All of our brands started right here in the UK, as the first market for distribution, but over the years we can now be found across the globe, our ranges have got bigger, along with us as a business.

To date we have achieved so much, but there is still plenty of room to grow further and that means we need more brilliant people, those that share an ambition for making a difference and want to join us in delivering the next chapter of growth. Fancy getting involved, then read on…

We are looking for a passionate new Head of Category to join an ambitious and high performing business that has driven continuous double digit growth for the last 3 years. Reporting to the Managing Director you will be responsible for leading a team of 2 to deliver outstanding category advice to our key customers, while internally delivering the insight, reporting and category strategy to unlock growth.

Leadership and Team empowerment:

• You’ll lead the category team for Kiddylicious in the UK by setting clear direction, encouraging your team and the wider business to always deliver exceptional results, empowering them through trusted leadership and personal development.
• Setting clear objectives and building development plans for the Category Team to support them in their personal growth.
• Work with our colleagues in the wider business to identify and deliver insights into the UK and Global Brand Marketing teams to inform and shape strategy.

Customer Collaboration:

• This is a customer facing role – whilst you won’t necessarily be responsible for retailer accounts day-to-day you will need to build and maintain strong relationships with key contacts so that our customers understand and buy in to our strategy and vision.
• Strong understanding of retailer strategies and the wider environment to ensure we remain customer and shopper centric.
• A strong external network is also helpful to give you an outside perspective from other categories and businesses.

Strategic Insights:

• All this data is only useful if it enables us to make better business decisions. You’ll be integral to the way that the business uses data.
• Key input as part of the MD’s leadership team, being the voice of category and source of objective truth.
• Development of the UK Category Vision and Strategy for Kiddylicious and translating this into something that is both actionable, executable and understandable within each retailer.
• You will lead and own the strategy for Revenue Growth Management.
• You will kick off our annual planning process with a brand and category diagnostics, meaning our brand plans are always insight led.

Developing best practices:

• You’ll make sure that the right data is available to the business and is being used the right way - whether informing internal strategy and business planning, or improving relationships with our retailers.
• Management of continuous data and regular reporting on category performance to the total Kiddylicious business. Feeding in monthly KPIs to the MD leadership meetings.
• Management of the Kiddylicious category budget – ensuring we are getting the most value for our data.

Alongside living our TOP values, we are looking for someone who:

• A passion for data and well-versed in the tools of the trade (Nielsen, Circana , Kantar, Dunnhumby, SIP)
• This is a data driven, strategic role, so you’ll be a great problem solver with experience of using complex insight data to create short and long term strategies
• Excellent communication skills, in particular inspirational presentation skills
• Ability to build great relationships both internally and externally, finding collaborative simple solutions and being recognised as a trusted expert that unlocks opportunities
• Outcome focused, results driven
• Able to prioritise quickly in a fast moving, entrepreneurial environment
• Proven commercial acumen by being able to evaluate how category strategy will impact sales and profitability
• This is a small team within the business, but it has a big impact – we need someone who will be an inspiring leader. We’d love someone who doesn’t take themselves too seriously, who is passionate about contributing to the culture at Kiddylicious and the wider Natural Foods business and who is happy to get stuck in