Ben Nauman is the Senior Director of Purchasing for National Co+op Grocers (NCG), a business services cooperative for retail food co-ops located throughout the United States with 147 member co-ops operating over 200 stores in 38 states and combined annual sales over $2.1 billion.
Ben joined NCG in 2004 and worked as the development director for co-ops in the Midwest before moving on to develop NCG’s category management programs and oversee the largest expansion of NCG’s purchasing initiatives since the creation of the Co-op Advantage Program (CAP). Ben leads NCG’s Category Management team to build win-win partnerships with brands for food co-op shoppers, the Supplier Programs team to pool the purchasing power of co-ops with distributors and strategic partners to drive down costs, and NCG’s analytics group to drive fact-based decision making throughout the food co-op system.
Prior to NCG, Ben worked for three retail food co-ops as a buyer, department, store and general manager and as a buyer for a regional supermarket chain. Ben works out of NCG’s St. Paul, MN office.