Joining us as Finance Manager – Food Stores, you’ll play a key role within our Commercial Finance team, partnering closely with the Food Leadership Team to drive sustainable financial performance across our food retail estate. This is a highly visible and influential position where you'll combine commercial insight, strategic thinking and financial expertise to help shape key business decisions, improve performance and support the delivery of ambitious growth plans.

Working at the heart of the business, you'll provide robust financial analysis, challenge and guidance that enables leaders to make well-informed decisions. You'll collaborate with teams across Operations, Trading, Supply Chain and Support Functions, helping to translate strategic objectives into actionable plans while identifying opportunities to increase sales, improve profitability and drive operational efficiency. Your ability to turn complex financial data into clear, practical recommendations will be critical in ensuring the business remains focused on delivering its objectives.

A key aspect of the role is leading the financial planning cycle for Food Stores, including budgeting, forecasting and performance reporting. You'll monitor trading performance, identify emerging risks and opportunities, and provide timely insights that drive accountability and action. By developing a deep understanding of the factors influencing store performance, you'll help the business continually improve results and make smarter commercial decisions.

You'll also play an important role in evaluating investment opportunities across the estate. From store investments and capital expenditure proposals to wider strategic initiatives, you'll develop and assess business cases, analysing financial returns, risks and sensitivities to support effective resource allocation. You'll measure the impact of investments and ensure expected benefits are realised, helping the business maximise value from its decisions.

Beyond performance management, you'll act as a guardian of financial data and governance. By improving data quality and strengthening reporting accuracy, you'll help unlock valuable insights that support long-term planning, growth and value creation. You'll ensure robust financial controls are maintained, supporting compliance with corporate standards while proactively identifying and mitigating risks.

You'll contribute to building a high-performing, commercially focused finance function, where you'll support and coach colleagues, champion continuous improvement and collaboration, and role model our values and leadership behaviours. Through your influence and expertise, you'll help foster a culture of accountability, curiosity and performance excellence across the Food Leadership Team.

Success in this role will be measured by your ability to enhance commercial decision-making, improve the quality and understanding of performance data, strengthen forecasting accuracy and drive measurable improvements across the store estate. Above all, you'll be instrumental in helping the business deliver its annual budget, strategic ambitions and long-term growth objectives.

We are looking for a qualified Accountant (ACA, ACCA, CIMA or equivalent) with experience in commercial finance or business partnering roles, ideally within retail, FMCG, or other consumer-facing sectors. You will have a strong understanding of food retail economics, including sales, margin, pricing, promotions, shrinkage, labour productivity, and store performance.

You will combine strong commercial acumen with excellent analytical and financial skills, using data to provide insight, influence senior stakeholders, and drive business performance. Advanced Excel, financial systems, and data visualisation skills are essential, while experience with AI-enabled analytics and modern data tools would be advantageous.

The successful candidate will build credibility quickly, demonstrate resilience, and excel at stakeholder management. You will be comfortable operating in a fast-paced, evolving environment and be able to translate complex information into clear, actionable recommendations.

This role would suit someone who is curious, proactive, and commercially minded, with a passion for retail performance and continuous improvement.

A collaborative, relationship-focused approach is essential, along with a commitment to developing people and teams. Most importantly, you will be driven by outcomes and focused on delivering value for members, customers, and the business.

Everyone is welcome here We’re happy to make reasonable adjustments so that all our candidates can show us how they’ll perform their role. There is a section in the application form where you can provide any additional information. Please use this section to include any reasonable adjustments you need, and we’ll do our best to support you through our recruitment process

What benefits are available to you?

In addition to our competitive salaries, our colleagues also benefit from:

Reward and Benefits

• Fantastic colleague discount - Reward ££’s and discounts across our Retail and Funeral businesses.
• Retail discounts- our hub offers colleagues access to hundreds of exclusive retail discounts, savings on days out and holiday discounts.
• Colleague Dividend- We pay a share of our profits to eligible colleagues as a thank you for their contribution to our success.
• Colleague recognition- we celebrate our colleague’s achievements both personally and professionally
• Personalised learning and development- with easy access to a wide range of training programmes
• Paid time for volunteering- we encourage our colleagues to spend three days per year taking part in volunteering, fully paid for by us.
• Enhanced family friendly policies- to help you feel fully supported during any significant life events.

   

  Wellbeing

• Annual health check kit and virtual GP – Finger prick blood test kit, that is sent to Square Healthcare for your personal healthcare report, and access to a virtual GP 7 days a week 8am to 8pm for you and your family.
• Colleague assistance programme – to support you and your family when you need it the most.
• Healthcare Cashplan- your wellbeing is important, so you’ve got the opportunity to contribute into a voluntary plan that helps pay towards a range of healthcare expenses.
• Company sick pay – We offer company sick pay to colleagues so that you can focus on getting better and returning to work in full health.
• Life Assurance- after an initial qualifying period, you’ll get free life assurance cover, that pays your nominated beneficiary if you die while you’re working for us.
• We’ve got you – our colleague wellbeing campaign, making wellbeing benefits and resources accessible and relevant to the role that you do.
• Give as you earn- helping you support charities which mean something to you.

   

  Financial Wellbeing

• iTrent Financial Wellbeing (Wagestream)- offers something for all our colleagues, whether you want to track your finances, save some money, or access up to 50% of your earned pay flexibly in a way that suits you.
• The Money Co-op – Free access to support all aspects of your financial wellbeing, such as savings and loans at competitive rates.
• Salary Sacrifice schemes:
  • Electric Vehicle scheme – Option to purchase your EV through salary sacrifice
  • Share Incentive Plan (SIP) – option to buy shares within the Society, where they will attract interest and £10 worth of matching shares.
  • Cycle to Work scheme – Option to purchase your bicycle and accessories through salary sacrifice
  • Holiday buy- colleagues can buy up to a week extra of annual leave each year
• Company Pension- you can access a company pension scheme with us as well as access to Pension wellbeing information.
• Nous – smart assistant that can save you money and time on managing your household bills.

To find out more about all of these plus many more reasons to join us, please visit Rewards and benefits - Central Coop (careers.coop)

OurCoop is the UK’s largest independent co-operative Society, with more than one million Members and 13,000 colleagues operating in communities nationwide. It was formed by bringing together Central Co-op, The Midcounties Co-operative and Chelmsford Star Co-op to create a stronger, member-owned organisation rooted in shared co-operative values.

The Society trades nationally through its family of businesses while remaining deeply rooted in local communities. Its footprint spans Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire and Bedfordshire in the South and West; the Midlands including Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Northamptonshire; the North including Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Yorkshire; and the East of England, including Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk.

OurCoop and its family of businesses are trading names of Central England Co-operative Limited.