Warehouse & Fulfilment Manager

📣A bit about the role

This is an exciting opportunity to join a high growth manufacturing business on a new greenfield site, Butternut Box. The Warehouse & Fulfilment Manager will sit on the site leadership team and will report to the Site Director, this role will be instrumental to setting up and leading the Warehousing function of Butternut Box in Poland.

They will be responsible for all deliveries into site, the shipments out, and all internal movements within the operation. The role involves managing the storage of supplies and goods in 3 different temperature zones. The Warehouse & Fulfilment Manager will have a fundamental role in establishing the new site, building and team and shaping processes using templates provided by the UK Operation.

You will have experience and passion for process improvement, skills development and engaging teams through high growth and change. An integral part of this role is to take the team on a scaling journey, the way we do a task today won't be the way we do it tomorrow, there will be evolution with growth, your role is to communicate and ensure passion.

You will face many challenges but will have the resilience, ingenuity, creativity and capability to adapt to the circumstances and, working with the wider team, will create systems, processes and, ultimately, a working environment that matches the aspirations of the business.

👉 Want to know more about our factory in Zabrze? Click here!
https://join.psibufet.pl/praca-zabrze/

A bit more detail

Service & Resource

• Ensure the warehouse delivers zero down time to both production and fulfilment, as well as dispatched on time/in full for couriers, to all European regions.
• Ensure we deliver the right product to the right place, at the right time. 
• Facilitates inbound material deliveries across Sam’s kitchen, ensuring safety & quality standards are adhered to through the team.   
• Understand and implement initiatives that will continually drive improvements in productivity elsewhere in Sam’s kitchen, ensuring we’re always working on the most effective initiatives.
• Drive process compliance with scanning through all systematic moves and stock counts, prioritising the right and most critical or at risk counts . Understand & lead on how to track, report and investigate variances. 
• Be accountable for every pallet that’s moved and stored at Sam’s kitchen, whilst having balance vs. an ‘always on’ approach. Know when and how to delegate responsibilities vs. taking control.
• Support the technical team on inbound & finished goods checks, making sure that only product that should be consumed is consumed 100% of the time. Drive the highest quality standards in the warehouse, to deliver the best quality & experience for our customers. 
• Manage MHE fleet availability & uptime across site. Own the contracts with our MHE partners, conduct regular performance reviews and drive innovation in this space. 
• Own the warehouse budget from a resource & overheads perspective, strive to over achieve on this.

People

• Build out a new team, setting goals and putting plans in place to engage them in the processes from the UK Site 
• Drive engagement in the Warehouse to create an environment where squad members feel proud to be part of our team and recommend us as a great place to work
• Manage and support our Warehouse Team Leaders to meet and beat all of their goals. Support them to grow as individuals and progress in their careers, targeting areas that they require training or could improve in. 
• Understand what team member strengths are and where they can do more, how you can lead through them by delegating and giving them initiatives to drive improvements across the warehouse operations. 
• Understand how each warehouse squad member is performing through regular check-ins and in person conversations, prompting team leaders to continually develop their team. 
• Maintain a safe working environment at all times across all shifts. People safety is paramount, and we should ensure we are continually improving working practices alongside our Health & Safety Champions. 
• Understand and plan people requirements, ensure we are recruiting the right people at the right time. 
• Spot talent in the team and ensure that they have the support from all levels to grow and progress within the business. 

Operational Standards, Processes & Improvement

• Set up the new site, building and team and shaping processes using templates provided by the UK Operation.
• Drive throughput and capacity in the team to ensure we are always able to meet the requirements of production, fulfilment, final mile and international regions. 
• Understand our existing capacity (people, space, equipment), and what our physical capacity needs to be in 12 months time. Build a plan to ensure we always have headroom on a rolling basis.
• Achieve a consistent feel, set of processes and procedures that are followed identically across all shifts. 
• Drive operating standards across all shifts and all areas of the warehouse operation. 
• Drive operational efficiency by understanding how we both plan and staff accordingly to ensure we overachieve on per box cost / cost per tonne, recognising when to pull either output or available people levers
• Identify & deliver process initiatives that continue to scale and drive improvements in accuracy, standards, compliance or safety, balancing all metrics as part of initiative, leading to enhancements in all areas. 
• Ensure the team follows all SAP or reporting processes to maintain accurate records to support the overall business. 

🔎 A bit about you

• A good level of experience as a Warehouse Operations Manager - used to managing multiple shift managers (sometimes called warehouse managers)
• Experience gained within the food industry to understanding the challenges and critical nature of our product and the controls required is essential
• Experience gained in the fast-moving consumer goods market (FMCG), would be advantageous
• Breadth of experience in areas like supply chain, fulfilment, transport and planning would be a nice addition but not essential
• Strategic, long term, improvement driven
• Site start up experience or from a high growth scaling business would also be desirable
• Lives and breaths Health and Safety
• Fleet management of MHE experience, including contracts, repairs and maintenance is essential
• Stock Accuracy should be your second language
• A passion for data, and all things Spreadsheet and analytics
• Very Strong Stakeholder Management skills
• Hands on, and understands how and when to jump in and support vs direct from afar  
• Experience of SAP or SAP B1 would be desirable
• Loves dogs (naturally)
• Pragmatic, adaptable, resilient and humble
• Well-practised planning, organisation and scheduling skills
• Ideally financial and budget control experience
• Hungry for a challenge and keen to elevate the warehouse function to the next level
• Easily approachable with good interpersonal skills
• Problem solving skills and priority setting

🙌 A bit about what we offer

📄 Full-time employment contract
🌿 Additional days off
🥩 Free food for your dog
🩺 Medical care via Medicover
🤾‍♀️ Multisport gym card
👐 Paid volunteering programme
🍽️ Discounted meals and free beverages
🎓 Training & development opportunities
🎉 Team-building events and company celebrations
🚗 Free parking
…And most importantly, a team that loves dogs!

🐶 PsiBufet & Butternut Box Background

Butternut Box was founded in 2016 and has seen outstanding growth and significant investment during its rapid evolution. A certified B-Corp, Butternut Box is committed to doing better for the planet, people and dogs. In 2023, the business secured £280m of investment from General Atlantic and L Catterton. This significant investment has allowed the business to rapidly develop its international expansion plans. These plans centre around European expansion.

Butternut Box fully acquired PsiBufet, a Polish Direct to Consumer dog food brand in 2023. This business provides a foothold from which to establish a new manufacturing plant to serve these markets. To achieve the growth demands will require the UK factory, ‘Rudie’s Kitchen’, to deliver increased output whilst a new Polish operation is commissioned and brought online.

The new site is in Zabrze and will be more than 37 000 m² (compared to the original UK site at 14 000 m²) and will eventually have 8 lines with the capacity to produce 1 200t per week.

Work is required to ready the building for food manufacturing, and this is underway. Once this is completed, equipment will be installed to allow a fulfilment operation to be moved from an established site. Further equipment is being installed and commissioned in readiness for the first production to commence on the end of 2025. Again, a production team will need to be recruited and trained to make this possible. It is envisaged that much of this training will utilise the knowledge and experience gained at Rudie’s.

🏗️ Project Milestones

• Facility preparation for food production – in progress
  
• Equipment installation & fulfilment launch – planned for Autumn 2025
  
• Recruitment and training – new employees will be trained by the experienced team at Rudie’s Kitchen (UK)
  
• First production – by the end of 2025
  
  

🛠️ Our Values & ways of working

At PsiBufet and Butternut Box, people come first. We're proud of our high retention rates and growth opportunities in a supportive, inclusive workplace. The business’ values are: 

🐾 Dedicated & Determined
🐾 Open & Honest
🐾 Genuine Care
🐾 Strive for Better
🐾 For the Love of Dogs

🔍Recruitment process 

• Screen/interview
• Video interview
• Face to face interview in Poland with Site visit
• Site visit to UK to meet Senior Butternut stakeholders

🎯 Want to join our team? Apply today! 🚀