Sourcing & Category Manager

About the Role:

The 3P Sourcing and Category Manager is a dual-purpose role responsible for owning third-party (3P) procurement and account management for key customers while simultaneously serving as the Category Manager for assigned parent and sub-categories. This individual drives ingredient sourcing, vendor management, and oversees the demand planning process.

Key Responsibilities

3P Sourcing & Account Management

• Own end-to-end procurement and account management for 3P customers across multiple facilities, including new ingredient sourcing, demand forecasting, and cost negotiations.
• Act as the lead representative for assigned categories to major accounts, delivering proactive communication and ensuring a superior client experience.
• Lead category sourcing for assigned Produce or Grocery categories, identifying new suppliers and unique product innovations to meet 3P requirements.
• Manage and oversee short-term purchasing while developing long-term strategies for sustainable business outcomes.

Vendor & Process Leadership

• Partner with the 1st Party Misfits Merchandising team to negotiate contracts, pricing, and terms with suppliers to ensure competitive advantage and quality standards.
• Monitor vendor performance (reliability, quality, compliance) and implement corrective actions as needed.
• Develop and execute contingency plans for supply chain disruptions, process challenges, and quality issues.
• Manage a direct report (Buyer Analyst) responsible for demand planning and purchase order management; provide coaching, feedback, and professional development.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner across Inventory Planning, Merchandising, Operations, and Transportation to align demand projections with operational feasibility.
• Proactively drive solutions for cross-functional conflicts, ensuring business needs and customer commitments are balanced.

Core Values

This role is expected to demonstrate Misfits Market's core values at the Level 3

Misfits Prioritize Our Customer — Business Acumen

• Represents Misfits Market at an external level and is responsible for creating external partnerships.
• Revisits strategy and uses new information to make course corrections ahead of any problems.

Misfits Respect One Another — Business & Professional Communication

• Has a strong track record of collaborating productively with peers and wastes little time on internal politics; gains confidence and trust through honesty, integrity, and authenticity; keeps confidences.
• Effectively communicates purpose, goals, and updates to affected stakeholders with sufficient lead time to ensure they are aligned and prepared.

Misfits Do More With Less — Project Management

• Creates short and long-term goals based on 3P client needs
• Leverages resources across teams to improve efficiency and do more with less

Misfits Take Initiative & Deliver — Handling Ambiguity / Resilience

• Independently identifies issues, root causes, and retrieves information required to solve a broad range of issues on their own.
• Layers in own technical knowledge and experience, strategic industry/competitive benchmarks and trends, company goals, and other inputs to generate a variety of possible solutions
• Always has a contingency plan to ensure work is completed as close to 'on time' as possible.

Misfits Move Quickly and Deliberately — Digital Fluency

• Able to gather and analyze data from multiple sources in order to make business recommendations. Able to find trends in data and influential factors. Able to create 3-6 month action plans based on their analysis.
• In the absence of documentation, is able to use their knowledge of a topic to document a process and validate it with peers, leaders, and data.
• Able to present findings or recommendations in a manner that clearly conveys important takeaways.

Misfits Think Differently — Innovation & Improvement

• Figures out better and simpler processes for getting things done; sees hidden opportunities for synergy and integration

Qualifications

Experience

• 2–4 years of experience in Category Management and/or wholesale procurement / 3P account management.
• If supporting Produce: produce experience required; overall food experience preferred.
• Ecommerce and digital experience preferred, Meal Kit experience preferred

Education

• Bachelor's Degree and/or relevant experience + 3 years.

Technical & Industry Knowledge

• Considers the impact to customers and what matters to them; can draw from industry insights.
• Excellent interpersonal and negotiation skills.
• Strong understanding of financial principles, including forecasting and profitability analysis.
• Proficient in MS Office Suite (Excel, Word, PowerPoint) and Google Suite (Docs, Sheets, Drive, Calendar).
• Experience with contract process management.
• Product Knowledge: deep knowledge of technical specifications and features of products in the category — e.g., nutritional standards for food, materials used in packaged goods.
• Industry Standards & Certifications: knowledge of certifications such as USDA Organic, Fair Trade, and applicable food safety regulations.
• Quality Control: technical expertise in product quality standards and processes (shelf life, packaging durability, food safety).

Additional Requirements

All compliance requirements must be completed on time:

• Annual Harassment Prevention Training
• EHS/OSHA Training
• Workplace Violence Prevention Training
• IT Security Training
• Manager Training

Details of Position & Benefits:

• Salary range: $95,000 - $105,000/yr.
• Full-time exempt position
• Salary and employee stock options commensurate with experience
• Unlimited PTO
• Multiple health, dental, and vision plan options
• Life Insurance
• 401K plan