VP - Operations Excellence

Role Purpose

The Vice President - Operations Excellence will lead the design, standardization, and transformation of end-to-end store operations across all grocery formats. Reporting to the Managing Director UAE, this role is accountable for establishing best-in-class Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), business cycle processes, and ways of working that drive operational consistency, efficiency, cost discipline, sustainability, and superior customer experience.

The role acts as a central enabler across store operations from demand planning and ordering through to in-store execution and customer interactions, ensuring scalable, repeatable, and performance-driven operations aligned with business strategy.

Key Responsibilities

Operations Excellence & Standardization

• Define, develop, and deploy end-to-end SOPs across all store operations, ensuring consistency across hypermarket and supermarket formats.
• Establish standardized business cycle processes covering ordering, demand planning, receiving, replenishment, availability, shrink, hygiene, food safety, and compliance.
• Ensure operational processes fully support commercial strategies, promotional execution, and category plans.

Ordering, Demand Planning & Availability

• Design and govern store-level ordering and demand planning principles, ensuring accuracy, simplicity, and alignment with supply chain capabilities.
• Improve forecast accuracy and ordering discipline to drive on-shelf availability, freshness, and working capital efficiency.
• Define clear roles and decision rights between stores, supply chain, and commercial teams to avoid duplication and inefficiencies.

Ways of Working & Transformation

• Lead a comprehensive ways of working transformation, embedding execution discipline, clarity, and accountability across store operations.
• Introduce structured operating rhythms, governance forums, and performance cadences to improve execution speed and cross-functional alignment.
• Champion continuous improvement methodologies (Lean, Six Sigma, Kaizen) to drive productivity and reduce operational waste.

Store Productivity & Labour Standards

• Define and implement store productivity frameworks and labour standards across all formats, balancing service, cost, and employee wellbeing.
• Establish standard labour models, scheduling principles, and workload drivers linked to sales, volume, and complexity.
• Drive labour efficiency improvements while protecting customer experience and operational quality.

Store Operations, Commercial Execution & Customer Experience

• Ensure strong adherence to commercial standards, including planograms, range implementation, pricing, promotions, and in-store brand standards.
• Partner with Commercial teams to translate category and promotional strategies into flawless store execution.
• Design store processes around customer journeys, optimizing service levels, checkout efficiency, and ease of shopping.

Receiving, Back-of-House & Replenishment Excellence

• Standardize and optimize receiving and back-of-house processes, ensuring accuracy, speed, food safety, and quality control.
• Improve replenishment routines, stock handling and space utilization to support availability and productivity.
• Strengthen controls to reduce losses, errors, and operational inefficiencies.

Food Waste Management & Sustainability

• Own the design and rollout of food waste management frameworks, including prevention, markdowns, donations, recycling, and disposal.
• Embed waste reduction into daily store operations, KPIs and leadership routines.
• Partner with Supply Chain, Commercial, and Sustainability teams to reduce waste at source and across the value chain.

Supply Chain & Store Interface

• Optimize the interface between supply chain and store operations to improve forecasting accuracy, inventory flow, freshness, and availability.
• Ensure store readiness for inbound logistics, promotions, seasonal peaks, and new category launches.

Performance Management & Governance

• Define, monitor, and govern operational KPIs, including availability, waste, shrink, productivity, labour efficiency, service levels, compliance, and cost.
• Establish clear accountability, audit mechanisms, and escalation paths to ensure sustained adherence to standards.

Capability Building

• Build operations excellence capability through training, playbooks, tools, and coaching at store and head office levels, in coordination with the Retail Business School.
• Act as a strategic partner to senior leadership on operational scalability, resilience, and long-term transformation.

Qualifications & Experience

• 15+ years of senior operations experience in grocery retail, in multi-format retail.
• Proven track record in operations excellence, demand planning, store productivity, and large-scale transformation.
• Deep understanding of hypermarket and supermarket operating models, including fresh and perishables.
• Strong cross-functional leadership and change management experience.

Leadership Competencies

• Strategic, execution-focused operational leader
• Strong influencer and change agent
• Data-driven and continuous improvement mindset
• Customer- & people-centric
• Comfortable operating in complex, fast-paced environments