Full-time in office position in Hamilton, Ontario

Denninger's has been in the business of great food since 1954. What began as a family enterprise in Hamilton is now a third-generation specialty European grocer and prepared-foods manufacturer, with four stores across the Hamilton–Burlington corridor, an in-store bistro, a growing wholesale business, and a plant that turns out hundreds of products by hand every day.

Denninger's is now building its marketing department in-house. It is a deliberate investment in the brand: putting strategy, content, and customer growth in the hands of people who work inside the business, know the products, walk the plant floor, and can build the kind of institutional knowledge that only comes from being here.

Opportunity Overview
We are seeking a Strategic Marketing Manager to build and run Denninger's internal marketing department. The plan, the budget, the calendar, the reporting, and the working rhythm of the team are all yours to shape.

Reporting to the Merchandising and Marketing Manager and working closely with the CEO, this position owns the marketing plan and the results it produces. It is a hands‑on leadership role: the person who sets the strategy is also the person who runs the paid media, writes the copy that carries the brand, and builds the presentation that wins the room. For a marketer who has been waiting for full ownership of a function, this is that job.

The role comes with real support. An external marketing consultant is on the ground through the build, handing over systems, relationships, and context, and working alongside this position until the department is running on its own. What follows is an opportunity that rarely comes up: leading marketing for an established, profitable, seventy‑year‑old brand with exceptional product to talk about and considerable room to grow.

The Strategic Marketing Manager is accountable for what marketing produces and what it returns. The work divides across strategy and planning, customer growth, measurement, and leading a small, capable team.

Strategy, Planning and Budget
This is the centre of the role. Responsibilities include:

Building the annual marketing plan and revising it quarterly against business priorities

Owning the marketing budget end to end — allocation, pacing, reforecasting, and making the case for the investment

Setting priorities each quarter and keeping the team focused on them

Partnering with merchandising on seasonal and promotional planning, and translating category strategy into marketing execution

Representing marketing at the leadership level and in front of the board, in terms the business already uses

Negotiating vendor rates and maintaining the media kit and co‑op advertising program

Customer Growth: Paid Media and Local Search
Denninger's is a destination retailer with a devoted customer base and a large surrounding market that has yet to discover it. This role owns the levers that bring new people through the door:

Campaign structure, audience definition, budget pacing, and optimization across Meta and Google

Google Business Profile management across all four locations — accuracy, posts, photography, questions and answers,



and review generation

Setting a clear objective and success measure for every campaign before it launches

Weekly decisions on where to put the money behind what is working

Testing into new acquisition channels and building on what proves out

Measurement and Reporting
Building the reporting discipline that shows leadership exactly what marketing is doing and what it is returning:

Owning the monthly reporting pack — its narrative, its interpretation, and its presentation to leadership

Reporting against transactions and online sales, the two measures marketing is accountable for

Closing out campaigns against the objectives set at launch and applying what each one teaches

Producing the quarterly vendor and co‑op reporting pack

Establishing the measurement infrastructure the department will run on for years

Team Leadership and Prioritization

Leading a team of two: a Content and Design Specialist and a Marketing Operations Specialist

Running standing one‑to‑ones and developing both reports

Running the weekly intake session — reviewing requests from across the business, prioritizing against capacity, scheduling, and confirming timelines back to requesters

Giving the wider business a clear, reliable route for getting marketing support

Directing specialist external partners in photography and regulated packaging

Sales, Vendor and Communication Support

Presentation and document templates the wider business can use

Wholesale and account presentations supporting the growth of the branded portfolio

Internal communications that reach a workforce spread across four stores, a bistro and a plant

The writing across the department: long‑form, customer‑facing, and executive copy

Brand Stewardship
Denninger's has a mature visual identity documented in a brand standards guide. Writing the strategy layer above it — positioning, value proposition, voice and tone — is one of the defining opportunities of this role, alongside maintaining the standards, governing the template library, and keeping brand execution consistent across every location.

Merchandising and In‑Store Projects
Each quarter brings a defined in‑store project alongside the ongoing work — scoping with merchandising, specification, sourcing, supplier coordination, physical review, and installation planning. Bringing the brand to life consistently across all four stores is a stated priority of the business, and it lands substantially here.

Candidate Profile
The right person for this role is a marketer who likes running things. Comfortable owning a number in front of a CEO, comfortable setting priorities and holding them, and happy to roll up their sleeves and make the work themselves. This is a small team inside a company that makes things by hand,



and the leadership here is genuine.

They should be someone who enjoys building systems as much as campaigns: the reporting, the planning rhythm, the working relationships that make a department credible. Much of that gets built from a clean sheet, which is the appeal.

Paid media fluency is a core requirement. This is the growth budget, and this role owns it directly. Strong writing matters too. The brand's voice, its long‑form storytelling, and its executive communication all run through this seat.

And a real interest in food goes a long way. Much of this job is spent on a plant floor and in four stores, learning products well enough to sell them properly.

Professional Experience

5–8 years of progressive marketing experience, including responsibility for a budget and a plan

Demonstrated ownership of paid media — building, running, and optimizing campaigns directly

Experience reporting marketing performance to executives or ownership

Track record of leading or directing others

Strong project management, prioritization and stakeholder‑management skills

Technical Skills

Meta Ads Manager and Google Ads, including Performance Max and local campaigns

Google Business Profile, Google Analytics, and local search fundamentals

Email marketing platforms and list management

Shopify or comparable e‑commerce familiarity

Building presentations and documents to a professional standard

Working knowledge of design tools sufficient to direct creative and produce from templates

Industry Knowledge

Understanding of retail, grocery, food, hospitality or another business where the customer walks through a door

Familiarity with promotional calendars, vendor co‑op advertising and trade programs is a strong advantage

Appreciation for brands built over decades rather than campaigns

Preferred Qualifications

Experience building an in‑house marketing function

Background bringing agency‑held work onto an internal team

Exposure to EOS or a comparable operating framework

Consumer packaged goods, private label, or wholesale marketing experience

Time commitment: Full‑time, on‑site across the Hamilton–Burlington locations and the plant

Compensation: $65,000 – $75,000 per year

Start date: January 4, 2027

Vacancy status: Currently hiring

Reports to: Merchandising and Marketing Manager

Direct reports: Content and Design Specialist, Marketing Operations Specialist

Requirements
Ability to meet the physical essential job functions of the role, including but not limited to sitting, standing, and walking for extended periods, repeated lifting from floor to shoulder level, and sustained manual dexterity.

Denninger's is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. Accommodations are available on request throughout the recruitment process.

R. Denninger Limited utilizes AI in the preliminary screening of all applicants submitted through our careers portal to determine their base eligibility. All further review is completed by a member of the hiring team.

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📌 Strategic Marketing Manager (Ontario)
🏢 R. Denninger
📍 Ontario