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About Us
Operating in nearly 40 countries across the world, our purpose is to be the best part of the journey. Whether our customers are flying abroad on holiday, heading off on a business trip or commuting to work by train, we aim to offer them food and drink experiences that meet their many different tastes and needs.

What You’ll Get from Us
Our Commitment to learning and development is our commitment to unlocking our people’s success. We strive to provide a wide range of resources that boost our people’s skills today, and help them fulfil their potential tomorrow. No matter where you join us, you’ll have all the tools you need to take charge of your development. Surrounded by like-minded colleagues and guided by industry experts, it’s your career, your way at SSP.

Commercial Analyst

About Us

SSP is a leading operator of food and beverage outlets in travel locations worldwide, with c.42,000 colleagues in over 600 locations across 37 countries. We operate sit-down and quick service restaurants, cafes, lounges and food-led convenience stores, principally in airports and train stations, with a portfolio of around 550 international, national and local brands.
 

These include our own brands Upper Crust, Millie's Cookies etc. as well as franchise brands such as M&S, Starbucks and Burger King.
 

Our purpose is to be the best part of the journey, and this is underpinned by our aim to bring leading brands and innovative concepts to our clients and customers around the world, with an emphasis on great value, taste, quality and service.

About the Role

Main Purpose of the role

  • To work with the Commercial manager(s) / Head of Commercial to ensure EBITDA delivery to budget targets by;
  • Weekly review of trading performance and recommend actions to improve performance
  • Perform analysis to design and measure local pricing and commercial trials using a mix of controlled experiment techniques, market research and ‘ad hoc’ analysis
  • Post-trial analysis of impact
  • The identification of key commercial opportunities and priorities for testing
  • Develop analytical tools and templates
  • The role holder will be expected to use a variety of levers to drive like-for-like sales growth, such as range improvement, optimisation of price and promotion, upselling and maximisation of the use of space, and will drive category performance e.g. hot drinks, as well as the performance of the brand or brands.

 

What you will be doing:

The commercial performance of the brand or a small portfolio of brands (LFL sales and gross profit) – deliver stretch EBITDA target
 

Planning

  • Commercial / category plan – support the Head of Commercial to create the commercial / category plan for each of the specified brand or brands – Focused on ensure plans will drive sufficient value to deliver corporate stretch targets
  • Work closely with finance to ensure budget and forecast capture planned impacts ensure budgets are realistic and deliverable based on pipeline commercial activity
  • Sign off - submit proposed sales and gross margin improvement activities to weekly trade / monthly commercial activity meetings for approval (background, financial value and suggested next steps) 
  • Support Commercial manager / Head of commercial to ensure preparation analysis is completed to support marketing briefs to access marketing services - marketing services such as NPD, creative design, marketing planning and brand development are provided by the Group Marketing function. 

 

Modelling

  • Ensure activities are modelled with clear assumptions and rational to support the assumptions
  • Test and learn activity is designed with robust control groups and expectations of success are clear before activities are live
  • New openings, modelling of forecast sales mix at product level working alongside Commercial managers
  • Support Category manager (or) Commercial manager in preparing proposals for trading or commercial forum sign off

 

Implementation / Analysis

  • Work with Commercial executive / manager to ensure consistent implementation of the agreed strategy at brand level. E.g. Tracking compliance of activities prior to detailed reviews
  • Reviewing data pre to post or year on year, normalisation of data to ensure seasonal and external factors driving performance are mitigated within reason
  • Ensure that the true cost to the business of product decisions is considered, within analysis
  • Post completion review of new openings
  • Pricing trial and elasticity reviews
  • Look for optimisation opportunities either in other brands or in other product categories where similar principles can  be applied
  • Support Category manager (or) Commercial manager in preparing proposals for trading or commercial forum sign off

 

Reporting / MI

  • Review - report results at weekly trade and monthly commercial forum meetings.  Assess whether forecast has been achieved and EBITDA can be banked.  (Course correct where necessary)
  • Highlight new opportunities to improve performance through regular reviews of MI
  • Ensure that opportunities are highlight and discussed with Commercial executive / managers

To be successful in this role you will need:

 

  • Track record of analysing commercial data to drive insights and change in businesses
  • Good grasp of commercial issues in a consumer/retail environment
  • Must be able to drive decision-making through analysis and based on evidence, rather than intuition
  • Evidence of building effective working relationship with commercial teams
  • Ability to self-manage and to work under pressure and deliver within deadlines
  • Strong team member
  • Must be able to develop innovative ideas to drive top and bottom line, testing, learning and refining and then operationalising them
  • Structured and analytical thinker
  • Exceptional attention to detail
  • Ability to focus effort on most profitable outcome
  • Innovative and bold – able to find new ways of doing things, challenge the status quo, take an entrepreneurial approach (measured risk, high reward)

 


SSP are proud to be an equal opportunity employer who seek to recruit and retain the most talented individuals from a variety of backgrounds, skills and perspectives.

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