Advertising End Date:
04 Sep 2026
All Locations
Homebased
All Departments
Buying Management
Salary details
Negotiable
Support teams
Michael Hansen (Hiring Manager - Head of Purchasing for Central Frozen, Deli & Ambient Seafood)

About the role

Role Overview: 

The Category Manager is responsible for leading the commercial strategy, sourcing, and development of the Fresh category across the Bidfresh group. Reporting to the Buying Director, this role focuses on building profitable, sustainable business growth through strategic buying, supplier partnerships, and category development. The role combines strong commercial acumen with deep market knowledge, ensuring competitive supply, excellent product quality, and continuous innovation. 

Key Responsibilities

Category & Business Development:

- Own and deliver the category strategy for Fresh Salmon, Seabass, Haddock, Cod, Hake and many other species, driving sales growth, margin, and market share.

- Identify and develop new business opportunities, products, and routes to market, including foreign travel as required. 

- Analyse market trends, pricing, and customer demand to inform commercial decisions

Buying & Supplier Management:

- Lead commercial negotiations, contracts, and pricing structures

- Build long-term strategic supplier relationships focused on quality, sustainability, and cost efficiency.

- Manage seasonal supply challenges and mitigate risk through effective planning

Commercial Performance:

- Deliver agreed sales, margin, availability, volume and range increase targets.

- Monitor KPIs including waste, yield, forecast accuracy, and service levels

- Work closely with supply chain and operations to optimise freshness and stock flow

Quality, Compliance & Sustainability:

- Ensure compliance with food safety, traceability, and regulatory requirements

- Support responsible sourcing and sustainability initiatives (e.g. ASC, MSC, MCS)

- Resolve quality or supply issues quickly and effectively

Cross-Functional Collaboration:

- Partner with sales, technical, logistics, and marketing teams

- Support customer-facing teams with market insight and product expertise

- Coach and mentor junior team member where applicable

Skills & Experience

Essential:

- Proven experience as a Category Manager or Senior Buyer within Fresh Seafood

- Strong knowledge of Fresh Salmon, Fresh Haddock and Fresh Seabass markets, preference would be to bring extensive knowledge of several species. 

- Demonstrated success in building and developing profitable categories

- Strong commercial, analytical, and negotiation skills

- People management skills. 

Desirable:

- Experience across foodservice, Production and/or wholesale channels

- Knowledge of global seafood supply chains and sustainability standards

Personal Attributes

- Commercially driven and results-focused

- Confident decision-maker

- Strong relationship builder 

- Adaptable in a fast-moving fresh food environment

 
 

About us

The Bidfresh journey
We’re Bidfresh. A fast growing team of fresh food experts in a collection of regional businesses across the UK. We’re a big business with big ambitions. We succeed by focusing on the detail. By going the extra mile to find the best products. By building relationships with our partners. And by going further to support our teams to develop and grow. Our work is full of excitement, care and a big sense of achievement. And our ‘Fresh’ values guide the way. Make our journey, your journey, and take your first small steps towards a big career adventure.
Rewards and benefits
We’ve created a benefits package that is designed to support you and reward your hard work. Every employee (subject to completion of probation) is automatically entitled to:
  • Discounts: Save on Bidfresh products, high street shopping, travel, and cinema tickets
  • Free parking: Free parking at our sites
  • Health care cash plan: Access to a health care cash plan
  • Confidential support and counselling: Access to free confidential support and counselling
  • Pension scheme: Access to a pension scheme
  • A minimum of 30 days holiday entitlement

Other jobs like this

Advertising End Date:
04 Sep 2026
All Locations
Homebased
All Departments
Buying Management
Salary details
Negotiable
Support teams
Michael Hansen (Hiring Manager - Head of Purchasing for Central Frozen, Deli & Ambient Seafood)
Latest

Fish Filleter

All Locations
London (Enfield)
All Departments
Fish filleting
Salary details
Competitive salary
Factory
Lukasz Kalinowski (Hiring Manager - Business Unit Director)
All Locations
Stockport
All Departments
Drivers
Salary details
27867.84
Drivers
Gavin Lowe (Hiring Manager - Transport Manager)