Senior Forager - Local & Emerging Brands, Center Store

As a Senior Forager at Whole Foods Market, you’ll play a pivotal role in reinforcing our reputation as the ultimate destination for innovative founders and early-stage brands. Focused on discovering local and emerging brands, you’ll foster community connections and celebrate the unique flavors of each region. Your success will be measured by crafting a locally relevant, authentic customer experience and building a pipeline of exciting emerging brands.You’ll serve as an industry expert, engaging with the local and emerging supplier community through key platforms like trade-show supplier summits and our Local and Emerging Accelerator Platform (LEAP). By nurturing meaningful relationships and meeting suppliers where they are, you’ll provide the right tools and resources to support their growth, development, and advocacy within the local food scene. Ready to help shape the future of food? Join us and be a champion for the next big brand!This role is based in Austin, TX, with an expectation of being in the office 5 days a week.

Responsibilities

• Ensures that Whole Foods Market’s customers have an unparalleled locally relevant experience by developing relevant brands and surfacing geographical taste preferences.

• Partners cross-functionally with Merchants, Marketing, and Retail/Area Operations to drive speed to market, strong execution in stores, and storytelling.

• Supports the development for local and emerging suppliers to onboard, activate and grow including quality standards compliance, distribution, promo planning, demo activation, and marketing support.

• Drives goals of the team and organization.

• Works cross-functionally with internal and external stakeholders to collect data-driven insights, integrates industry trends and emerging challenges to develop recommendations about new, creative, and innovative products in support of Category Merchant strategies.

• Develops local and emerging product and innovation strategy within assigned geographies based on category strategies, customer and product trends, competitive landscape, and Whole Foods Market differentiators.

• Supports category assortment strategies including supplier line reviews, local and emerging brands assortment analysis, and monitoring WFM and competitor product development.

• Plans effective local and emerging brands promotions and supports marketing initiatives.

• Supports execution of category pricing strategies and helps ensure financially sound and value adding pricing tactics.

• Applies analytical skills to evaluate and interpret complex issues in purchasing, procurement, contract, delivery, quality, pricing and other issues.

• Translates and analyzes complex data, ensuring timely and effective communication with all levels of the organization.

• Engages in strategic industry events through attendance, participating in panel discussions, networking functions, and other events.

• Plays a key and influential role working with others, in groups, in cross-functional settings and with diverse stakeholders internally and externally.

• Serves as a resource on WFM capabilities and captainships.

• Provides coaching and mentoring for new TMs.

• Travel up to 25% of the year.

Skills

• Demonstrates general understanding of WFM business, food retail industry, and the business models of key strategic partners and competitors.

• Possesses clear understanding of center store retail business objectives, including all aspects of pricing, merchandising, retail operations, financial analysis and reporting, and competitive strengths and opportunities.

• Establishes challenging goals for self and others that are designed to achieve exceptional business results.

• Understands financial goals and guidelines, tracks ongoing progress, and follows up on assigned responsibilities.

• Proficient with data analysis and able to understand statistics and modeling of consumer behavior.

• Makes item decisions independently, but may leverage team leader for final call on key decisions.

• Able to develop product innovation ideas and adapt quickly to changes and feedback.

• Able to compare business to established targets, develop plans, quantify initiatives, and monitor progress.

• Proficient in pulling financial reports, analyzing business trends, and assessing underlying drivers of results.

• Highly proficient computer skills, including with Microsoft Office.

• Able to hold supplier meetings independently.

• Works tenaciously to overcome obstacles and to meet or exceed goals, measures progress, and evaluates results.

• Remains self-disciplined, prevents irrelevant issues or distractions from interfering with timely completion of important tasks, reprioritizes as appropriate.

• Infuses clarity in team structure, accountability, and goals; seeks feedback from stakeholders to help improve performances.

• Fosters a work environment that encourages people to act with integrity and treat each other and their ideas with respect.

• Conveys messages logically, simply, succinctly, and at the right pace; does not digress, demonstrates strong interpersonal communication skills and levels of tact, diplomacy, and confidentiality.

• Communicates effectively with all types of audiences, internally and externally, in both written and verbal mediums.

• Solid change management skills, demonstrates flexibility to perform in a dynamic environment.

• Creative problem-solving skills, maturity to handle ambiguity.

• Models WFM leadership principles, core values, and commitment to customer service.

Education & Experience

• BA/BS degree and 4-6 years’ relevant experience OR equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.

At Whole Foods Market, we provide a fair and equal employment opportunity for all Team Members and candidates regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, age, marital status, disability, or any other legally protected characteristic. Whole Foods Market hires and promotes individuals solely based on qualifications for the position to be filled and business needs.Whole Foods Market works with job sites like Indeed, LinkedIn, and ZipRecruiter to promote opportunities at our company. Please be aware that other career sites may not be accurate or up to date and may even be fraudulent. We encourage and recommend all candidates to apply via our site.