Assistant Buyer- Grocery

About Grocery Outlet:

• Our Mission: Touching lives for the better
• Our Vision: Touching lives by being the first choice for bargain-minded consumers in the U.S.
• Our Values & Behaviors: Achievement, Diversity, Entrepreneurship, Family, Fun, Integrity & Service

About the Team:

Our Purchasing team's mission is to provide bargain-minded customers with the deepest discounts on quality and branded products. In many ways our team is the heart of the organization- building and maintaining vendor relationships and providing solutions for our supplier partners and independent operators. Our buyers are empowered with speed, flexibility, and freedom while their passion and creativity embody the art of closeout buying. Successful members of our team are motivated to exceed annual comp sales, thrive in a collaborative environment, have an entrepreneurial spirit, and be motivated by relationship building.

About the Role:

The focus of this role is to assist the buyers with their daily responsibilities. This role ensures accuracy in the ordering process while facilitating communications between vendors, corresponding buyers, stores, and other departments within the company. This role reports to a Buyer on the team. This role reports to a Buyer on the Grocery team.

Responsibilities Include:

• Support Buyers on all day-to-day functions of the department.
• Assist Buyers in writing purchase orders and monitoring production timelines, fulfilment accuracy, as well as shipping and receiving of shipments.
• Monitor future purchase orders and manage weekly receipt flow into the 4 different distribution centers, to insure timely arrival of orders.
• Responsible for initiating recalls when needed, reduction of prices after approval and work closely with accounts payable if cost discrepancies arise.
• Responsible for Direct-to-Store Delivery (DSD) vendor-store-item linkages and maintenance of the Flexible Order Guides (FOG's) especially changes in costs, retails, values, effective dates. Track and maintain monthly promotional ad plan.
• Work closely with the inventory planning team to support buyer forecasting and managing of imports.
• Ensure that communication (written/verbal) is complete and thorough with vendor and internal partners.
• Maintain positive working relationships and communication with vendors, internal departments, stores and warehouses.
• Assists Buyers in analyzing the suggested reorders of product and looks for opportunities to improve efficiencies.
• Responsible to communicate directly with vendors as issues come up with exciting POs.
• Review sales by store by SKU; identifying hot and slow sellers.
• Maintain vendor relationships; work with vendors and Buyer to help negotiate better terms and/or costs for merchandise being purchased.
• Establish and maintain a reputation of credibility and responsiveness; promptly returns vendor and store phone calls, ensures timely follow-up on issues within 24 hours.
• Assists in marketing event planning and promotional execution.
• Identify and shop competition (including price checks); understand the target customer.
• Identify trends within the department to help reach and exceed sales and margin plan.
• Keep communication with stores top of mind and write articles addressing new trends/items/processes or providing additional information for upcoming challenges.

About The Pay:

• Base Salary Range: $30 Hourly
• 401(k) Profit Sharing.
• Medical, Dental, Vision & More!
• Final compensation will be determined based upon experience and skills and may vary based on location.

About you:

• B.A. Degree or 1 to 2 years retail/sales or related experience and/or training; or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Ability to prioritize, multitask and manage multiple projects with broad workload to meet deadlines in a fast-paced environment.
• Keen to details and highly organized.
• Strong written & verbal communication skills.
• Able to effectively and respectfully communicate with all levels of staff and management.
• Excellent interpersonal skills, willing to learn and shows positive attitude towards change.
• Proven team player, self-motivated, independent thinker.
• Highly analytical.
• Resourceful and able to research problems and recommend solutions.
• Proficient in the use of Excel, Microsoft Word and Outlook.

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