Garden Center Manager

Pemberton Farms Marketplace, a family-owned grocery store in North Cambridge, has served the community since 1930, offering deli, catering, fresh food, craft beer, and a garden center. The garden center sets the stage for the changing seasons in North Cambridge, serving as a hub and green oasis for residents in an otherwise bustling urban environment.

The Garden Center Manager is responsible for overseeing both day to day and big picture operations of the garden center, ensuring the highest levels of customer service, overseeing inventory purchasing, quality control and merchandising; overseeing year round and seasonal employees; creating policies and procedures and more. This is a very active, hands-on, and physically demanding role. It requires experience and a deep knowledge of horticulture, and a willingness to learn and perform every role in the garden center.

Our store hours are 7am to 9pm Sunday through Thursday, and 7am to 10pm on Friday and Saturday. We are a 5-minute walk from the Davis Sq. T Stop.

Schedule:

8-10 hour shifts.

Full time.

Days and hours of work vary by schedule and season. Must be available to work evenings, weekends, and holidays. Schedule fluctuates according to business needs and season. Holidays will likely require more hours. The busiest times of the year are mid-April through mid-June, October, and late November through the end of the year.

Management:

- Hiring, training, scheduling and overseeing a team of employees, including buyers, shift leaders and seasonal garden center associates.

- Maintaining a very high level of customer service, leading by example for seasonal staff to provide a great customer experience

- Reaching sales goals, managing margins, tracking shrink, tracking purchases, as well as merchandising and setting price points, enacting sales, and managing inventory storage and control.

- Overseeing education and outreach; organizing workshops and speakers, assisting with social media promotions, and planning events.

- Developing and upholding procedures and protocols to ensure productive and consistent expectations are held

- Creating signage to accurately reflect pricing, plant information, department sales, events, workshops, etc.

- Ability to operate a forklift or willingness to obtain certificate within reasonable amount of time after hiring

- Communicating and overseeing special orders for customers

- Managing deliveries and delivery protocols, and communicating with drivers and customers

- Ensuring a clean and safe work environment and shopping experience for customers - Overseeing all purchasing and merchandising of plant material and hard good supplies

- Maintaining accurate costs and information POS system

- Record keeping of purchases, shrink and stored inventory

- Understanding trends in the horticulture industry, and developing the garden center to reflect our customer’s changing wants and needs.

- Coordinate all winter snow removal and salting efforts, including communication with contractors and managing day of removal teams

Buyer duties include:

- Buying seasonal plant material and hard good supplies for our year around greenhouse and cut flower program, and seasonally in our outdoor garden center yard, ensuring quality control standards are met.

- Merchandising plants material and seasonal displays

- Monitor plant quality upon delivery/payments, communicate with suppliers about damages

- Working with suppliers to negotiate pricing and discounts

- Maintain and continue long standing relationships with suppliers, and seek out new suppliers to expand product selection and variety

- Set retail prices based off wholesale price, shipping costs and desired margins, and handle invoices

- Maintain quality of inventory through plant care, and by training seasonal Garden Center staff to care for inventory

- Act as an expert and resource for customers and seasonal employees

- Communicating with customers about special orders and desired products

Physical Demands:

This is a physically demanding and active job. Applicants must be able to be on their feet for 10 hours a day, and must be able to kneel, bend, push, pull, and lift up to 40 lbs repeatedly.

Job Type: Full-time

Pay: $60,000.00 - $65,000.00 per year

Benefits:

• 401(k) matching
• Dental insurance
• Employee discount
• Health insurance
• Paid time off

Shift:

• 8 hour shift
• Day shift
• Evening shift

Experience:

• Retail buying: 2 years (Preferred)
• Gardening: 2 years (Preferred)

License/Certification:

• Forklift Certification (Preferred)

Work Location: In person

Salary : $60,000 - $65,000