As we continue our mission to make people and nature happy through re-inventing chocolate, we’re looking for a Strategic Sourcing Manager – Facilities Management & Utilities to join our Procurement Team on a permanent basis.

This is not your ‘normal’ procurement role – you’ll be partnering to strategically source, the reinvention of chocolate, for people and for nature.

In this newly created role, you will be responsible for leading procurement activity across our Facilities and Utilities categories, balancing value, innovation, savings, and new capabilities. We seek excellent procurement professionals to drive strategic, transformative initiatives and take pride in their work.

Our Indirect Procurement Team is in its early stages but has already achieved significant wins. This role has the exciting potential to enable further strategic transformation particularly with our ongoing investment in our factory, distribution centres and retail estate. As a relatively young but commanding brand, we offer autonomy and the chance to make visible impacts, and we need self-starters who can lead projects through ambiguity and capitalise on valuable opportunities. If this excites you, we want to hear from you!

As well as a competitive salary and a range of company benefits including private healthcare cover, enhanced maternity and paternity leave and Company pension contributions, you’ll receive 50% discount on all products, and a 70% discount for you and your guests when you stay at our Rabot Estate hideaway on the paradise island of Saint Lucia.

Here at Hotel Chocolat, we've adopted hybrid working. You’ll join us on site for 3 days a week to engage and collaborate as a team, with our stakeholders and suppliers, but you can figure out which sites, which days and where you need to be to get your work done. Stakeholders for this role are mainly based across our on-site locations in St. Neots and Huntingdon, with occasional travel to our distribution centre in Harpole, Northampton. For the other 2 days – you can work from wherever you like!

This is a full-time, Monday to Friday role, however we’re not ‘clock watchers’ here at Hotel Chocolat, we simply ask that you are available between the core hours of 10am to 4pm and you can flex your remaining hours accordingly.  

We are open to conversations around flexible working.

What you’ll be doing:

1. Business Partner - Act as a Business Partner and trusted advisor for all procurement matters across the Facilities & Utilities categories building relationships with stakeholders at all levels across Manufacturing, Fulfilment, and Retail, to maximise supplier capabilities to drive performance, originality of innovation and ethics.
2. Procurement Delivery - Create, lead, and manage the category sourcing plan and end-to-end procurement delivery, drawing on a broad range of sourcing approaches and applying the most appropriate to gain commercial value e.g.  direct negotiation, RFI, RFQ and leading critical supplier negotiations.
3. Targets and Plans - Working in partnership with Finance and functional colleagues, develop, manage and own the facilities and utilities category plans, delivering agreed savings and operational improvement targets, refining as necessary to align with evolving business needs and challenges, and closely monitoring progress to ensure, timely delivery.
4. Policy, Process and Governance - Supporting the Head of Indirect Procurement, act as a key custodian of indirect third-party governance for the Procurement policy, processes, tools and templates driving compliance across the category and wider business, identifying opportunities for enhancement and improvement.
5. Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) - Actively supporting and guiding contract owners in understanding their role and accountabilities in managing suppliers. Building performance focussed relationships with supplier peers to improve commercial and operational outcomes, and ensuring innovation is an integral part of SRM activity.
6. Performance escalation - Act as escalation point for supplier performance issues within the category and ensure resolution and further escalation to the Head of Indirect Procurement as needed.
7. Risk and Sustainability - Identify, manage and escalate supplier and delivery risk across the category, improving supply chain transparency and aligning category procurement activities with evolving Procurement ESG/ Sustainability strategy.

Who you are:

1. Business Partnering - Experienced in building and maintaining trusted relationships with stakeholders across all levels of the business, working alongside other business areas to support strategic and operational decision making and provide procurement commercial insights to drive business performance.
2. Commercial Acumen - Be able to bring together category market and supplier insights and an understanding of business objectives to increase value throughout supplier lifecycle, providing procurement commercial insights to drive business performance.
3. Category Management - Experienced in delivering real, tangible value throughout the procurement lifecycle through development and implementation of category strategies.
4. Planning and Monitoring - Delivers projects on time, to agreed joint objectives through applying project management skills to scope, manage, track and report projects.
5. Contract Development - Establishes relevant contracts through negotiations that improve quality, cost, risk and innovation and establishes sustainable supplier relationships.

Essential

• Strong understanding of facilities and utilities categories.
• Proven ability to establish trusted relationships and influence senior stakeholders.
• Trained and skilled in all elements of procurement.
• Experienced in promoting Procurement Policy.
• Proven ability to lead complex negotiations.

Desirable

• Trained and skilled in all elements of procurement, ideally CIPS qualified.
• Background from CPG, Retail, Logistics, Airline or Hospitality.
• Bachelors or master’s degree with Commercial Focus.

Who We Are…

We’re one of the UK’s favourite premium chocolate brands, with a range of products spanning luxury gifts, alcohol and our pioneering drinking chocolate system, the Velvetiser™.

A cacao pod takes years to grow – it can’t be rushed if it’s going to be just right for our products. The same can be said for Hotel Chocolat, which originally started as a mint production company before we realised it was luxury chocolate that we were really passionate about.

Now, we’re market leaders in the industry. What began as an online-only business grew to 135 stores across the UK, and we’re still growing… Today, we’re multi-category, multi-channel, and multi-territory, and our customers, colleagues, cacao farmers and suppliers all benefit from the success we make together.

To learn more about us and read about our People Pledge – our commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion – click here: hotelchocolat.com/uk/engaged-ethics/our-people.html