Category Analyst

About the Company

Blount Fine Foods is a family-owned business with five generations of experience making, marketing, and developing premium fresh prepared foods. The company brings restaurant-style meals to consumers across the United States, including single-serve grab-and-go soups, macaroni and cheese, entrées, and other products sold in grocery stores, hot bars, and restaurants. Its portfolio also includes items with specialty certifications such as organic, gluten-free, and low sodium.

The team is positioned for long-term growth and offers the chance to build a rewarding career while helping deliver high-quality food experiences.

Role Overview

The Associate Category Analyst will support the growth and long-term performance of Blount’s owned and licensed consumer packaged goods brands. This position focuses on building and maintaining dashboards, reporting tools, and analytical models that improve decision-making across marketing and sales. The role works closely with commercial teams to evaluate activities, measure effectiveness, and understand how initiatives affect the sales pipeline and return on investment.

The role also relies on syndicated market data, internal systems, and a combination of quantitative and qualitative inputs to produce a well-rounded view of business performance. Collaboration is a key part of the job, with regular interaction across Sales, Marketing, R&D, Communications, Operations, and Customer Service to identify useful data points and improve tracking practices.

Key Responsibilities

• Review categories and analyze sales and promotional performance for strategic customer accounts, including space, category, product, and promotion planning.
• Study shopper and retailer behavior and turn the findings into practical recommendations.
• Spot market trends and growth opportunities for both Blount brands and competitors, then communicate those insights to sales, marketing, and forecasting partners.
• Work with syndicated and internal category data sources and translate them into useful business insights.
• Create fact-based selling narratives, insight summaries, and best-practice materials for customer presentations.
• Build reports, dashboards, and marketing/sales communications that help teams track performance more effectively.
• Prepare presentations and supporting materials that help the sales team strengthen Blount’s presence with key retailers.
• Partner with Sales to design A/B testing approaches that measure promotion lift, incremental impact, and fatigue.
• Ensure trade and promotional activity for assigned retailers is accurately recorded and reflects the most current retailer information.
• Track retailer-level trade spending and forecasts, and provide clear, actionable recommendations to stakeholders.

Requirements

• A bachelor’s degree from a four-year college or university is required; an MBA is preferred.
• At least 5 years of relevant experience in brand management or category management, ideally within a CPG environment.
• Strong Excel skills, including pivot tables, VLOOKUPs, and similar functions.
• Hands-on experience with Tableau, Power BI, and syndicated data platforms such as IRI or Nielsen.

Compensation & Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• 401(k) with company match.
• Paid time off, including vacation, sick time, and holidays.
• Education assistance program.
• Life insurance and short-term disability coverage.
• Employee discounts on Blount products at the company retail location.
• Discretionary annual bonus program.

Additional Information

This is a full-time, onsite position based in Warren, Rhode Island.