Associate Category Manager

About Us

We care more about attitude and work ethic than your experience, love to promote from within, and have dynamic and interesting coworkers and customers. We have faith in people's potential, make friends at work, and take pride in all of our 5-star reviews.

You thrive when you see new responsibilities as opportunities, are happiest when busy, figure out how to fix it—not who's to blame—and see mistakes as opportunities to learn and grow. You enjoy spreading joy.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with the Category Manager to achieve sales, margin, and unit growth while fulfilling our promise of an incredible selection.
• Participate in negotiations with Director of Category Management oversight; support profitable promotions and EDLP programs.
• Perform category reviews and period close in collaboration with the Category Manager; implement category strategies to support sales, units, and margin dollars while reducing waste and identifying areas of improvement.
• Make data-driven suggestions on category strategy based on analysis and product knowledge.
• Collaborate with the merchandising team to create and update planograms.
• Work across departments—including Planogramming, Pricing, and Supply Chain—to support seasonal forecasts, allocations, and vendor/product setup.
• Support the Category Manager in upholding ingredient and sourcing standards, including affidavits.
• Assist in exiting discontinued items, new item setup, service agreements, and seasonal item rollouts.
• Gain exposure to managing vendor relationships with oversight; participate in broker, brand, and supplier meetings.
• Assist with supplier management on fill rate, service level, product quality, and shelf life in collaboration with Supply Chain.
• Perform regular competitor visits, store visits, and supplier site visits as needed.
• Follow department SOPs, suggest process improvements, and use internal systems as intended.
• Guide and train Category Specialists as needed.
• Support new store responsibilities per Asana board; assist with SPINS analysis.
• Grow knowledge and skills by participating in tasks, projects, training, and career-related learning events.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent experience.
• 1-3 years’ experience in retail, category support, merchandising, or purchasing.
• Developing negotiation skills and exposure to supplier relationships.
• Knowledge of natural/organic food industry trends, products, and ingredient standards.
• Advanced proficiency in Excel (including Pivot tables, V-Lookups, Index Matching), experience working with large data sets, Google Suite, and Asana (or other project management software).
• Experience interpreting data and dashboards; ability to spot broader dataset issues.
• Highly organized, dependable, and detail-oriented.
• Comfortable juggling shifting priorities and deadlines.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills with internal teams and external suppliers.
• Self-motivated learner with initiative and curiosity.
• Interest in natural/organic products and our values.

Pay

The salary range for this position is $72,000–$83,000.

Benefits

• Paid Time Off, plus holidays.
• Paid Pregnancy and Child Bonding Leave.
• 30% employee discount.
• Exceptional medical, dental, and vision plans.
• 401k with company matching.

Schedule

This role works 5 days a week out of our Rockville, MD headquarters.