🟣Business Unit Director: Convenience
🟣Location: North- Office Focused
🟣Remuneration: Six Figures + Executive Benefits
The Business
Our client is one of the largest private-label food manufacturers in Europe, partnering with a broad portfolio of UK grocery retailers across mainstream, value, and convenience sectors. With deep commercial capability in chilled categories and an ambitious innovation pipeline, they are investing heavily in future growth through customer partnerships, operational scale, and long-term category leadership.
Their three-year strategic ambition is bold, to lead the industry in delivering unbeatable value, operational excellence, and brand-building through own label. Alongside their existing strengths, they are now elevating their focus on the fast-paced, commercially agile world of value-led and convenience retail, a channel where speed, service, and trusted relationships shape success.
Significant group investment and a clear long-range plan are already in place. This role has been created to lead the charge in one of the most strategically important growth areas in UK retail.
The Role
As Business Unit Director – Convenience & Value Retail, you will take full ownership of a high-growth, multi-category business unit. This includes a broad customer base spanning grocery convenience, value-led retail, frozen specialists, and hybrid formats.
You will shape the end-to-end commercial strategy, lead a high-performing customer team, and deliver both short-term commercial wins and long-term structural growth. This is a customer-facing and internally transformative role.
You will work cross-functionally with peers across supply chain, category, operations, and innovation, embedding new ways of working, sharpening execution, and positioning the business as a partner of choice.
This role offers exceptional visibility across the organisation, as well as direct influence with senior customers who play a central role in shaping modern retail and shopper behaviour. Customer Scope will cover:
* Convenience: Co-op, Nisa, Spar, Costcutter
* Grocery Convenience Formats including Tesco Express, Sainsbury’s Local, and Morrisons Daily
* Value Retail / Hybrid: B&M, Home Bargains, Poundland and Farmfoods.
Key Responsibilities
* Own and lead the total commercial agenda for the UK Convenience and Value Retail business unit
* Develop and execute short, mid, and long-term commercial strategies that drive margin, share, and growth
* Lead key partnerships across Iceland, Lidl, Heron, B&M, and other major customers
* Build and inspire a first-class commercial team across sales, category, and customer management
* Drive change by embedding agile processes, data-led thinking, and faster, sharper execution
* Work cross-functionally to shape and deliver operational excellence across chilled categories
* Create customer-specific plans that balance short-term trading performance with long-range innovation
* Represent the Convenience business unit at board level, influencing investment decisions and shaping the overall strategic direction of the group
* Lead a mix of traded, value-driven products alongside higher-margin innovation and development ranges
* Act as the voice of the customer internally, ensuring exceptional service, responsiveness, and category alignment
Why Apply
✔️ Lead a strategically critical business unit in one of the fastest-growing sectors in UK retail
✔️ Own major customer partnerships across value and convenience channels with multi-million-pound P&L responsibility
✔️ Work directly with the executive board to shape future investment, innovation, and commercial direction
✔️ Join a well-resourced, future-focused group with a clear vision for long-term category leadership
✔️ Be part of a lean, agile, and high-performance culture where pace, creativity, and accountability are rewarded
✔️ Build a platform for further executive progression, from Commercial Director to future GM or MD pathways
Candidate Profile
We are seeking a senior commercial leader with a track record of delivering results in UK grocery, ideally across chilled, short shelf-life, or own-label categories. Experience in convenience or value retail is highly desirable.
• Proven experience leading large retail accounts such as Iceland, Lidl, B&M, or other high-volume customers
• Commercially astute with strong P&L ownership, pricing, and customer strategy expertise
• Track record of growing customer portfolios, driving margin, and managing complex product mixes
• Inspirational team leader who builds trust, develops capability, and drives high performance
• Comfortable leading change in dynamic environments and embedding agile ways of working
• Exceptional internal stakeholder management skills, especially within matrix structures
• Ready to operate at pace with high visibility and real accountability