49er Industry Chats: Careers in the Food Industry

As My Dad Always Says, “Working in Food, You’ll Never Go Hungry”

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Eric Metz

Eric J. Metz ’03

Category Manager (Grocery, Home, Pet, Baby), iHerb.com

Eric has almost 30 years’ experience in the food industry. He’s held positions with some of the nation’s top supermarkets and food distributors including Melissa's Wholesale Produce, Wal-Mart, Wegman's, and H-E-B Grocery Company. He helped launch 200 stores across the U.S. with Tesco's Fresh and Easy as a marketing and merchandising manager. He then transitioned to JLE Enterprises, where he bought and sold food items with top discount retail chains like 99cent only stores, Grocery Outlet, and Big Lots. For the past six years Eric has worked as a Category Manager at iHerb.com, one of the world's top e-commerce retailers, purchasing hundreds of millions of dollars a year in sports nutrition and grocery products from top brands like Optimum Nutrition, Muscletec, Gerber, and McCormick.