Planning & Purchasing Manager

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 2020, 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 po…

View the full posting and apply