Category Planner - Grocery Drinks
Salary: Competitive Plus Benefits
Location: London Store Support Centre and Home, London, EC1M 6HA
Contract type: Permanent
Business area: Food Commercial
Closing date: 10 July 2025
Requisition ID: 400004688
Food Commercial - Category Planner C4
Why join us
Joining the Category Planning team at Sainsbury's means being part of a team that is always one step ahead, driving innovation and delivering exceptional value to our customers. As a Category Planner for Grocery Drinks, you'll have the opportunity to collaborate with a diverse group of strategic thinkers and problem solvers, working alongside stakeholders from various departments to execute our promotional plans and maximise our category's impact. With your analytical skills and attention to detail, you'll play a vital role in shaping our promotional strategy, utilising data and insights to drive improvements and deliver on our corporate objectives. At Sainsbury's, we value work-life balance and provide a flexible working environment that empowers our colleagues to excel in their roles while enjoying a fulfilling personal life. Join us to make a difference and be part of a team that thrives on providing the best for our customers.
What you'll do
You will play a crucial role in driving the overall value proposition for the category. Working alongside a diverse team of problem solvers and strategic thinkers, you will collaborate with various stakeholders, including Buyers, Marketing, Commercial Operations, and our supply base. Your expertise in in-depth analysis and meticulous attention to detail will be the driving force behind how we deliver against our corporate strategy, managing promotional space to showcase value and innovation to our customers, and implementing channel activations for the Grocery Drinks category. You will take ownership of executing promotional timelines, ensuring best practises and first-time delivery, and communicate the retail execution of our promotional plan and seasonal events. Additionally, you will optimise and maximise promotional space for Convenience and Online Grocery Drinks, utilising data and insights to inform promotional plans and drive improvements. Your goal is to support the evolution of the Grocery Drinks promotional strategy while building a strong insight and knowledge base to enhance our capabilities.
Who you are
You are a proactive and strategic thinker with a keen eye for identifying opportunities and making effective decisions in a fast-paced retail environment. With your solid understanding of retail, customer insights, and buying or promotions knowledge, you play a pivotal role in delivering the overall value proposition for the category. Your exceptional project management and analytical skills enable you to effectively manage promotional timelines, optimise promotional space, and drive improvements through data-driven insights. With excellent communication and influencing abilities, you collaborate closely with stakeholders across the organisation and build strong working relationships to ensure the successful implementation and communication of promotional plans. Your strong sense of initiative, problem-solving skills, and drive for process improvement contribute to the continuous evolution of the Grocery Drinks promotional strategy, ultimately enhancing the customer experience and achieving our corporate goals.
We are committed to being a truly inclusive retailer, so you’ll be welcomed whoever you are and wherever you work. Around here, there’s always the chance to try something new - whether that’s as part of an evolving team or somewhere else across the business - and we take development seriously and promise to support you. We also recognise and celebrate colleagues when they go the extra mile and, where possible, offer flexible working. When you join our team, we’ll also offer you an amazing range of benefits. Here are some of them: Moments that matter are as important to us as they are to you which is why we give up to 26 weeks’ pay for maternity or adoption leave and up to 4 weeks’ pay for paternity leave.
Starting off with colleague discount, you'll be able to get 10% off at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat after 4 weeks. This increases to 15% off at Sainsbury’s every Friday and Saturday and 15% off at Argos every pay day. We've also got you covered for your future with our pensions scheme and life cover. You'll also be able to share in our success as you may be eligible for a performance-related bonus of up to 20% of salary, depending on how we perform.
Your wellbeing is important to us too. You'll receive an annual holiday allowance, and you can buy additional holiday. We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, interest free car loan of up to £10k, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, pay advance (where you can access some of your pay before pay day) as well access to a great range of discounts from hundreds of other retailers. And if you ever need it there is also an Employee Assistance Programme, you will also be eligible for private healthcare too.
Please see www.sainsburys.jobs for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).
