Location: Toronto, hybrid, from our office on Geary Ave Reports to: COO (Operations & Finance) Start: Q4 2026
About WakeWater
WakeWater is one of Canada's fastest-growing functional beverage brands, built to move with you. From electrolyte drink mixes to sparkling hydration and clean energy, we create great-tasting functional products designed for people who want to get more out of their day.
Founded in Toronto in 2021, WakeWater has grown from an emerging local brand into an eight-figure national business. Today, our products can be found at Costco across Canada, Sobeys, Farm Boy, Whole Foods and Circle K, as well as on Amazon in Canada and the U.S. and directly through wakewater.ca.
Behind our growth is a close-knit, ambitious and entrepreneurial team that believes great brands are built by moving quickly, thinking differently and staying close to the consumer. We keep things simple and move with purpose. Everyone has an impact, decisions happen fast, and great ideas can go from concept to market in weeks, not quarters.
Our ambition is to build WakeWater into one of North America's leading functional beverage brands, and we're looking for people who want to help build it with us.
The role
WakeWater is looking for a Planning & Purchasing Manager to own how we forecast, plan and buy. You will report directly to the COO.
We've scaled to eight figures on the strength of a small team moving quickly. The next stage is about predicting and controlling that growth rather than chasing it - knowing what we'll need, when, and at what cost, well before anyone has to ask.
This fall we're implementing a full ERP and inventory system of record: lot-level traceability, BOM and production management, purchasing, EDI, and a live two-way sync into QuickBooks. You are not being hired to build a planning system out of spreadsheets. That's bought and being implemented. You're being hired to run it properly, make it tell the truth, and build the planning layer that sits on top of it.
That layer is forecasting. Our sales forecast arrives by customer and product line; turning it into SKU-level monthly demand, and then into a production and materials plan, is currently judgment rather than a system. Building that is the part of the job you won't inherit - and you'd be doing it with a real platform underneath you and an engineering team shipping weekly, rather than alone in Excel.
The rest of the role is demand planning, production scheduling across our co-manufacturing network, purchasing and supplier management, and the national inventory position across our 3PL network.
You'll work alongside our distribution and manufacturing owner, who holds the co-manufacturer and 3PL relationships and runs execution. The line between you is simple: you decide what should happen and by when; they make it happen. It is hands-on work on both sides. You'll build the plan and also chase the pallet.
What you'll own
Demand planning
- The monthly demand plan: sales forecast converted to SKU-level demand, and the assumptions behind that conversion
- Forecast accuracy, and closing the loop back into planning
- Channel-level demand logic across club, grocery, convenience, e-commerce and D2C
Production planning
- The production schedule across can and powder lines and multiple co-manufacturers - what runs, when and in what quantity. Which partner runs it is set with our manufacturing owner, who holds the cost, capability and lead-time picture for each one
- Run sizing, timing and output reconciliation against plan
- Backward critical path scheduling for major retail rotations - finished stock, repack, production, materials, film and artwork, held to date
Materials and purchasing
- BOM explosion to raw material requirements, netted against on-hand and open POs
- Supplier terms, MOQs, reorder points and the open-PO position
- Inbound raw material freight into our co-manufacturers - mode, timing and landed cost
- Purchase price variance and landed cost accuracy
Inventory
- The national inventory position and available-to-promise: how much we hold, where it should sit, and when it needs to move
- Stock transfer decisions between nodes - you call the move and the date; distribution executes it
- Aged stock and expiry exposure, flagged early enough to act on
- The integrity of planning data inside the ERP - BOMs, conversion ratios, costs and lead times
Measurement
- The operational scorecard: forecast accuracy, fill rate, inventory accuracy, purchase price variance and turns. You build and publish it; it's how the business sees itself, not a scoreboard you police
- Cross-functional alignment with Sales, Finance, Innovation, and our co-manufacturing and 3PL partners
Who you are
You have
- 3–6 years in demand planning, supply planning, production planning or procurement, ideally in food, beverage, supplements or another physical-product business that uses co-manufacturing
- Real fluency with lead times, MOQs, BOMs and safety stock. You can explain why a four-week ingredient lead time means ordering eight weeks out without looking it up
- Rigour about data. The instinct to chase a variance rather than accept it is the single most important trait for this role
- Advanced Excel or Sheets - modelling, not formatting
- Comfort making calls with incomplete information, and the judgment to know which gaps matter
- A bias for doing. You'll build the plan, and some weeks you'll also be the one chasing a delivery date on a Friday afternoon
- Comfort working across Sales, Finance and Innovation rather than running planning as a standalone function
Bonus points
- You've implemented or operated an ERP or inventory system, and have opinions about what makes them fail
- You've been the first planner somewhere, or built a planning process rather than inheriting one
- You use modern tools - LLMs, SQL, Power Query, low-code automation - to answer questions faster than the person next to you
- Experience with co-manufacturing partners, and the judgment to tell a partner who is slow from a partner who isn't going to make it
- Experience with Costco or club channel, EDI, QuickBooks, Amazon Seller Central, or Canadian retail
- Experience at a high-growth CPG or beverage brand that scaled from roughly $5M to $50M+
- A supply chain designation is useful but not decisive; we care more about what you've run than what you've studied
What we offer
- Competitive compensation plus bonus, set against your depth of planning experience and your background in the industry
- Health and dental benefits to support you and your well-being
- Meaningful ownership and impact - this is a function you own, not a seat you fill
- Exceptional growth potential as part of one of Canada's fastest-growing emerging CPG brands, with a defined path to Senior Manager as the co-manufacturing and supplier network scales
- Leadership development and mentorship, working closely with experienced founders and operators who have built and scaled CPG businesses
- An entrepreneurial environment where you can move quickly, test ideas, make decisions and see your work come to life
- And, of course, all the WakeWater you can drink
How to apply
Apply through LinkedIn with your resume and a few lines on one of the following:
- A planning process you built or fixed, and what you got wrong the first time
- A variance you chased down that nobody else thought was worth chasing
- A supply problem you saw coming that nobody else did
We're targeting a Q4 start and review applications as they come in. We welcome applicants of every background and will accommodate any needs through the hiring process.
