Assistant Buyer - Food & Drink

Are you looking for a new challenge in a buying role? If so, we have an exciting opportunity for you to join our Home, Food & Wine buying team as Assistant Buyer for the Food & Drink category!

We offer hybrid working between your home and our functional hub offices in our Newcastle Flagship store, offering a collaborative and innovative working space.

• 33 days annual leave (inclusive of 8 bank holidays) and a buying holiday benefits scheme in which you are eligible to buy a further 5 days across the year.
• Your birthday off as an additional day annual leave – this can be taken any day within your birth month.
• Up to 25% discount in all Fenwick stores and
• We Care  
  -24/7 GP, wellbeing advice & support service.
• Hybrid Working (typically Thursday and Friday working from home).

The Assistant Buyer plays a key role in delivering the buying strategy for the Food & Drink category across Fenwick’s stores and online. Working closely with the Buyer and wider Buying & Merchandising teams, the role supports the development and implementation of commercially sound range plans that reflect the Fenwick brand, respond to market trends and meet the needs of local customers, with a clear focus on driving sales, margin and market share.

The role is involved across the end-to-end buying process, including sourcing and developing food and drink ranges, supporting supplier negotiations, analysing trading performance and managing stock and OTB effectively. Through detailed trade analysis and strong attention to data, the Assistant Buyer helps identify opportunities for growth, improve efficiencies and reduce markdown risk, while ensuring ranges remain current, balanced and customer-focused.

Collaboration is central to the role, working closely with Retail, Digital, Marketing, Logistics and support functions to deliver seasonal strategies, product launches and promotional activity across the Food & Drink category. This role suits someone with buying experience in a multichannel retail environment, strong commercial awareness and analytical skills, and the confidence to build supplier relationships, contribute ideas and support continuous improvement within a fast-paced buying team.

• Intermediate level experience in buying, and sales.
• A keen interest in food, drink and premium gifting products.
• Experience in developing product strategies and building business cases.
• Analytical with a keen ability to identify opportunities for efficiency and improvement.
• Negotiating and contracting skills.
• Intermediate communication, influencing, and relationship-building skills.
• Experience with in a retail multichannel environment.