S8 E9: From Buyer to Supplier: A Journey Through the World of Food with Claire McIlroy

Claire McIlroy returns to the pod for a deep dive into the fascinating and surprisingly complex world of grocery buying. Having started her career on the buying side at DHL and Morrisons before moving into sales and her current role as Sales Director, Claire brings a rare dual perspective on what it really takes to get food from farm to shelf. She's also co-founder of the W Collective, a community dedicated to empowering women in their corporate careers.

In this episode, we hear how Claire worked her way through procurement at DHL - buying everything from stationery and paper clips to food for the NHS and Ministry of Defence, before blacking her way through three rounds of interviews to land a role at Morrisons' famously grand (and notoriously hard-to-reach) Bradford head office. There, she cut her teeth on Core Grocery private label buying, managing a huge portfolio of ambient products from chocolate spread and pasta to yeast extract.

Claire breaks down what private label buying really involves - from developing products that closely match branded equivalents (without crossing IP lines), to navigating salt and sugar targets, traffic light labelling, and driving efficiencies through packaging, sourcing, and logistics. This leads into the now-famous Thailand chicken example, highlighting just how global and commercially driven food supply chains are.

She then reflects on her time in fresh produce -from blueberries shipped in a dormant state to the reality of out-of-season fruit, it’s a fascinating look at what really sits behind quality on shelf.

Now on the supply side, Claire shares how her perspective has shifted within frozen from different KPIs to the impact of global events on costs - and why it’s a category far more complex than it might seem.

Finally, Claire reflects on her evolution from buyer to leader, how she built her confidence by always putting her hand up for the big, visible projects and how that same philosophy now underpins the work she does at the W Collective, where she coaches women to be strategic about their careers, close the gender pay gap, and step into leadership roles. 

Three Key Takeaways:

1. Buying is about far more than price. From supply chain efficiency and shelf-ready packaging to palletization and temperature-controlled shipping, a buyer's role spans procurement strategy, product development, logistics, and supplier relationships. If your availability or quality isn't there, the cheapest deal in the world means nothing.
2. Understanding seasonality and provenance changes how you shop. Blueberries from Peru that are put to sleep for six weeks at sea, Brazilian beef, chicken sourced from Thailand — the global nature of food supply chains is vast and largely invisible to consumers. That bland tomato or tasteless strawberry in winter? It's telling you exactly where it came from.
3. Be strategic about your career, not just ambitious. Claire's advice from her work with the W Collective: vague goals

Join us for our next Retail Buyer Meet up in London on Wednesday 28th April! Go to www.jointhebuyersclub.co.uk or DM us @jointhebuyersclub

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