Director, Product & Category Management

About Carolina Foods

Carolina Foods LLC produces high-quality Duchess branded and private-label bakery goods for retail customers nationwide. Based in Pineville in the Charlotte, North Carolina area, our single-site bakery brings product development and manufacturing together, giving leaders a direct connection to the products, people, and decisions that drive our business.

Our people are central to our success. We value leaders who take pride in their work, share ideas, and build strong partnerships. Our commitment to safety, food safety and quality, operational excellence, and continuous improvement guides how we work and grow.

Your Role as a Director, Product & Category Management!

Build the function. Shape the portfolio. See your impact on the shelf. Build your Leadership Impact. Carolina Foods is seeking a Director, Product & Category Management to turn customer and shopper insights into our next opportunities for growth. Reporting directly to the Chief Executive Officer, you will help define where we focus, which products we bring forward, and how we create value for our customers.

For a leader who enjoys creating something from the ground up, this is a chance to make your experience count across the business, by shaping the function from the beginning: define how we evaluate our portfolio, strengthen customer partnerships, and create a disciplined path from insight to profitable growth.

You will work closely with Sales, Marketing, R&D, Operations, Supply Chain, and Finance, connecting customer needs with manufacturing capabilities and commercial priorities. Initially, this is a hands-on individual contributor leadership role, with the opportunity to build a team as workload and results support additional headcount. This is a full time, exempt position, operating onsite from Carolina Foods HQ at Pineville, NC.

Key Responsibilities:

Portfolio & Product Lifecycle Management

• Own the private brand product portfolio strategy across its full lifecycle — ideation, development, launch, in-market optimization, and rationalization — aligned to category and channel growth priorities.
• Lead the stage-gate process for new product development in partnership with R&D, Operations, and Finance; own launch timing, specs, and go/no-go decisions.
• Run regular SKU-level P&L reviews; identify and execute rationalization of low-velocity, low-margin, or high-complexity items to simplify the portfolio and protect margin.
• Track item and platform performance post-launch against volume, margin, and trial/repeat targets, and course-correct or exit underperformers.

Customer & Category Growth Partnership

• Serve as the private brand category management lead in customer-facing engagements — category reviews, line reviews, and planogram resets — building fact-based selling stories from syndicated (Circana/Nielsen/IRI) and customer point-of-sale data.
• Partner with Sales to develop private brand category growth plans that position Carolina Foods as a trusted private brand category partner, helping customers grow their private brand program and the category overall, not just our items within it.
• Translate shopper, consumer, and market trends into assortment, pricing, and merchandising recommendations tailored to each customer's private brand strategy.
• Build and maintain the competitive and market landscape view — private brand vs. national brand share, pricing, distribution, and innovation — that informs both internal strategy and customer conversations.

Cross-Functional Leadership & Commercialization

• Act as the connective owner between Sales, Marketing, R&D, Supply Chain/Operations, and Finance to ensure new items and portfolio changes launch on time, on spec, and on margin.
• Own the commercialization calendar and communicate item changes, discontinuations, and launches across the organization and to customers with adequate lead time.
• Partner with Finance on pricing strategy, promotional economics, and trade investment ROI for the portfolio.
• Coordinate with Supply Chain/Operations to minimize complexity (SKU proliferation, changeover time, forecast error) introduced by new items or customizations.

Insights, Reporting & Team Leadership

• Establish and maintain a standard set of portfolio and category KPIs, reporting performance to commercial and executive leadership on a regular cadence — building this reporting from scratch in year one.
• Build category management capability across the commercial team — training Sales on category-selling tools, data sources, and storytelling as the function matures.
• Hire, manage, and develop the first Category/Product Manager(s) once the function's workload and results support adding headcount.

What Matters Most:

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Marketing, Food Science, or related field; MBA a plus.
• 8–10+ years of progressive experience in product management, category management, or brand management within CPG or food manufacturing.
• Demonstrated success establishing a new function, process, or team and turning an initial vision into practical, sustainable ways of working.
• Ability to combine strategic leadership with hands-on execution, personally developing the initial analyses, models, presentations, and category stories as the function takes shape.
• Demonstrated experience owning a product portfolio P&L, including pricing, mix, and margin management.
• Direct experience in private brand/private label category and product management — understands retailer private brand strategy and economics, and how they differ from national brand management.
• Direct experience partnering with retail and/or foodservice customers on private brand category reviews using syndicated data (Circana/IRI, Nielsen) and category management tools.
• Track record leading cross-functional teams (R&D, Supply Chain, Finance, Sales) through new product development and commercialization.
• Strong analytical and financial acumen; advanced Excel and PowerPoint skills; comfort building and defending a business case.
• Excellent communication and executive presence — able to lead both internal leadership reviews and external customer presentations.
• Willing to travel 10-15% of the time.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with retailer private brand & branded programs — store brand tiers, cost-plus/margin pricing models, and private brand innovation calendars.
• Experience in a food or beverage manufacturing environment, with working knowledge of ERP (JD Edwards or similar) and production/MES data (e.g., Redzone).
• Experience managing SKU rationalization initiatives and quantifying operational-complexity reduction.
• Familiarity with fiscal period-based (13-period) financial reporting.

Our Team Needs You!

Ready to help build what comes next? Bring your curiosity, commercial expertise, and passion for great products to Carolina Foods. If you are excited by the opportunity to create a new function, work directly with senior leadership, and turn ideas into measurable results, we would love to hear from you. Apply today or reach out to our Human Resources team to learn more. Join us and help shape the next chapter of Carolina Foods!