Senior Manager, Category Management

Wonder Group•New York, NY

6d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Senior Manager, Category Management is responsible for leading culinary and category strategies that drive product innovation, sales growth, and an elevated customer experience across Wonder’s portfolio of restaurant brands. This role focuses on identifying business opportunities, developing and launching new menu items, LTOs, and full restaurant concepts, and optimizing existing menus to ensure alignment with each brand’s pillars and Wonder’s overall business goals. The Senior Manager, Category Management partners closely with Culinary, Marketing, Supply Chain, Food Quality, Operations, Procurement, and Finance to bring innovative concepts to life while ensuring successful execution and operational feasibility on Wonder’s platform. This is a high-ownership role on a heavy pipeline of LTOs, new restaurant launches, revamps, and category refreshes — with the opportunity to shape what millions of customers eat next.

Requirements

6+ years of relevant experience in category management, brand management, menu strategy, or culinary innovation, ideally within multi-unit restaurants, food-tech, or CPG.
Proven track record leading menu or product innovation from insight to launch, including LTOs and new concept development, with measurable impact on sales and guest experience.
Strong commercial fluency — comfortable with P&L drivers, COGS, pricing and elasticity, mix, and metrics like AOV, AIV, GOV, CAC/LTV, and same-store sales.
Strong analytical skills with the ability to make data-driven decisions; advanced Excel skills and comfort building tools (forecasts, gap bridges, trackers) from scratch.
Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to influence and align cross-functional partners and senior leaders.
Demonstrated ability to manage a heavy, fast-moving pipeline across multiple brands and project types simultaneously.
A strong understanding of restaurant operations and how menu decisions land in the kitchen and on the platform.
Bachelor’s degree required

Nice To Haves

Preference for experience with Looker.
Project management experience and familiarity with business process improvement are a plus.
MBA or equivalent experience a plus.

Responsibilities

Lead category and menu strategy: Own the strategic roadmap for an assigned set of Wonder restaurant brands, defining 12–18-month menu and innovation plans grounded in customer insights, sales performance, and competitive landscape.
Drive end-to-end product development : Lead the development and optimization of culinary products from ideation through launch — across new menu items, LTOs, revamps, and net-new concepts — ensuring each is on-brand, on-strategy, and on-time.
Identify business opportunities : Translate sales data, customer behavior, and category trends into clear opportunities for growth in AOV, AIV, frequency, and same-store sales (SSS), and build the business cases to act on them.
Test and validate concepts : Partner with Insights and Food Quality to design product testing, sensory evaluations, and pilots that validate concept, pricing, and operational feasibility before scale.
Manage performance post-launch : Monitor item- and category-level performance, gather cross-functional feedback, and implement data-driven adjustments to optimize the menu against GOV, margin, and customer satisfaction goals.
Stay ahead of the market : Stay informed on culinary trends, competitive moves, and consumer behavior to inspire and inform Wonder’s product development pipeline, including emerging formats like bowl-based concepts.
Operate cross-functionally : Serve as the connective tissue between Culinary, Marketing, Supply Chain, Operations, Food Quality, and Finance, ensuring concepts are not only craveable but commercially viable and operationally executable on Wonder’s 1P and 3P platforms.
Build the operating system : Improve the tools, templates, and processes that support category management at Wonder — from culinary calendar planning and LTO recap infrastructure to SSS gap-bridges and forecasting tooling.