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 template

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