Senior Account Manager - Kroger

Cargill is a family company committed to providing food and agricultural solutions to nourish the world in a safe, responsible, and sustainable way. We sit at the heart of the supply chain, partnering with producers and customers to source, make and deliver products that are vital for living. By providing customers with life's essentials, we enable businesses to grow, communities to prosper, and consumers to live well.

This position is in our Food Enterprise where we are committed to serving food manufacturers, food service customers, and retailers with a complete range of innovative ingredients and branded products. Our portfolio includes poultry, beef, egg, alternative protein, salt, oils, starches, sweeteners, cocoa and chocolate.

Job Purpose and Impact

The Senior Account Manager - Kroger is a fully embedded, customer‑facing role supporting one of our key retail partners, Kroger. Acting as a daily extension of the customer's procurement and supply chain teams, this role provides strategic onsite partnership and first‑line support across multiple categories (primarily focused on deli & prepared foods).

In this role, you will communicate cross‑functionally, navigate the supply chain needs, deliver insights, support operational execution, and present solutions that drive commercial performance and create mutual value for both parties. This role is a unique mix with sales, sourcing, account management and supply chain.

The position is based in Cincinnati, Ohio and operates as a hybrid/onsite at the customer's procurement office location in Cincinnati.

Key Accountabilities

• Develop and maintain strong relationships across the Kroger procurement organization, ensuring team sales targets are met and that deli & prepared foods products needed to grow at Kroger are in their warehouses available to ship.
• Serve as the first line of customer support, monitoring customer needs, performance, and service levels by purchasing on the customer behalf to ensure continuous value creation, focused on deli and prepared foods categories.
• Develop strong account relationships that provide significant input to planning product, price and service strategies.
• Actively participate in procurement activities, supply execution, forecasting, demand planning, and ad management with both customer and internal stakeholders.
• Supports strategic account manager to identify and pursue new opportunities to broaden sales of Cargill's portfolio across customer categories.
• Participation & involvement in retail sales team initiatives, focused on the Kroger account plan and related sales activities.
• Work cross‑functionally with customer procurement, marketing, insights, and FSQR teams to drive mutual value and operational excellence.
• Independently solves issues for the account or related supply chain activities with minimal supervision while appropriately escalating broader or higher‑risk topics.

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Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent experience
• Minimum of four years of sales, business development or related work experience
• Direct customer selling experience, strong communication and presentation skills - especially face to face or at headquarter locations
• Able and willing to travel up to 20%

Preferred Qualifications

• Retail experience - knowledge of food or protein products including but not limited to beef, grinds, case ready, value-added protein and deli
• Demonstrated conceptual strength and the ability to deal with ambiguity and to lead and manage complex changes
• Demonstrated ability to work independently and collaboratively in a team environment

Equal Opportunity Employer, including Disability/Vet