Craft beer didn't used to be a category. It was a rebellion.
One brand did more than most to turn that rebellion into a fridge staple. You've drunk it. You've argued about it. You might have a can in your hand right now.
They're one of the biggest names in craft, with a fanbase most brands would kill for and serious ambition for what's next. Now they're building out the category team to go and win the shelf and that's where you come in.
Why should you care?
Because this isn't category work for a brand nobody's heard of. This is the one buyers already know. The one with a story, a huge following and real momentum behind it. Your job is to walk into grocery category reviews and change retailers' minds using insight they can't argue with.
You'll own a portfolio of grocery customers. You'll become the person they trust when they're deciding what goes on shelf, what comes off and what gets the good spot at eye level.
Get it right and you don't just grow one brand. You grow the whole craft beer category. That's the gig.
What you'll actually be doing
- Owning category relationships with a set of grocery customers and becoming the person their buyers call before they make a decision, not after.
- Running monthly category reviews people actually turn up for. Real insight. Clear recommendations. No 90-slide deck nobody reads.
- Digging into Circana, NIQ, EPOS and loyalty data (dunnhumby, Quantium and friends)
- Finding the growth. Sizing the prize. Proving where the distribution, ranging and rate-of-sale wins are hiding.
- Building retailer-specific plans that work for them AND the brand. Both. Not one at the expense of the other.
- Teaming up with Sales, Shopper Marketing, the revenue growth crew and Finance so the plan doesn't fall apart the second it leaves your laptop.
- Backing Joint Business Planning with category thinking that actually shifts the numbers.
Who you are
- You love a spreadsheet, but you don't hide behind one. You can pull a story out of a dataset and land it in a room full of sceptical buyers.
- You're commercially nosy. You want to know why a number moved, not just that it did.
- You're the one who simplifies. When everyone else is drowning in data, you're the person saying "here's the one thing that matters."
- You can challenge people — buyers, sales, your own team and do it with evidence, not ego.
- And you actually care about winning in category. Not in a spreadsheet way. In a "I want us on that shelf" way.
The experience bit
You'll probably be in Category Management, Top 4 Retail Buying or Commercial Insight in UK FMCG. You'll know grocery inside out, and you'll have shifted a retailer decision or two with nothing but good data and a good story.
Beer, alcohol or premium FMCG behind you? Lovely. Not essential however and we are cool with FMCG.
Here's the thing though. We value experience. We don't worship it. If you've got the insight brain, the instinct and the nerve to own a category review but your CV doesn't tick every single box talk to us anyway. The best category people we know didn't get there in a straight line.