Sam’s Club elevates focus on food with merchant moves

BENTONVILLE, Ark. — Veteran Safeway merchant Toby Noiles has joined Sam’s Club in a senior role as the warehouse club operator creates a new organizational structure for its food and beverage business.

Noiles was named senior vice president and general merchandise manager of grocery and beverage and joins Sam’s Club from the online grocery delivery company Fresh Direct where she served as chief merchandising officer. Noiles was with Fresh Direct only seven months but prior to that she spent 29 years with Safeway and held a wide range of merchandising roles.

Noiles fills a role previously held by Bryant Harris who had the slightly different title of senior vice president and general merchandise manager of food and beverage. He will now serve as senior vice president and general merchandise manager of fresh as Sam’s Club effectively divides its massive food and beverage business into two separate divisions.

The addition of Noiles, Bryant’s new role and reporting relationships were announced in an internal memo distributed Nov. 2 by John Furner, Sam’s newly appointed executive vice president of merchandising, and Tracey Brown, Sam’s chief member officer. Furner was named head merchant at Sam’s Club last month when former head merchant Charles Redfield was tapped to fill the role of executive vice president of food for Walmart U.S.

“We are making a few changes in our merchandising division to ensure that we have our associates, our best resources, focused in the right areas to achieve our company strategy goal of driving relevant merchandise and delivering better value for our members,” according to Furner and Brown.

Reporting to Noiles will Rob Burns, vp/dmm, dry grocery, Greg Cathey, vp/dmm, regional buying of food and beverage, Racquel Harris, vp/dmm, adult beverage and Ronnie Robinson, vp/dmm, tobacco, candy, auto fluids and wholesale trading.

Reporting to Harris will be Paul Hunt, vp/dmm, freezer/cooler, Russell Mounce, vp/dmm, produce and the soon-to-be-filled role of vp/dmm, meat. Also reporting to Harris will be Mike Turner, vp of fresh operations, Dennis Horn, senior merchandise director of Café and Eileen Fischer, senior merchandise director of bakery.