Lead customer service team to reach company goals. Develop and maintain relationships with key customers and stakeholders. Successfully achieved customer service excellence. Provide training and guidance on industry knowledge.

Support sales team in providing products to international foodservice customers. Determine proper order quantities and arrival time of orders in order to insure product is at the right place and time. Meet and maintain company goals of inventory management. Prevent and reduce overstock conditions, slow moving and obsolete inventory. Communicate closely with internal and external customers to insure operational efficiency and profitability.

Identified, qualified, and implemented productivity related initiatives. Built and managed strategic relationships with suppliers and internal customers. Facilitated daily management of produce category in close coordination with planning, logistics, R&D, and operations while focusing on continuous improvement. Coordinated and utilized team buying strategy to deliver best quality, service, and costs. Analyzed, developed, and validated business process improvements and related policies/procedures supporting procurement of fresh produce.Evaluated supply, price, and product trends to drive commodity risk management. Researched and analyzed innovation and productivity opportunities to deliver against organizational and concept strategies. Oversaw study industry publications, trade journals, and market information to keep current on relevant changes in produce market trends as well as general procurement, supply chain, and food service industry themes/practices.

Supported Produce, Corporate Services, and beverage categories with supplier and customer management. Built and maintained working relationship with suppliers, restaurants, and all other cross-functional teams. Supported other categories when needed to drive positive results. Identified opportunities, assisted with problem solving/root cause analysis, and offered solutions and process improvements for consideration. Provided various reporting and analytics.

Supported merchandising team by managing inventory to drive sales objectives and ensured inventory levels sufficient to support financial objectives. Provided detailed reports and analysis to guide proper business decisions to achievement of sales and inventory goals of SBA (Stock Base Assortment) programs. Partnered with merchandising and merchandise planning to analyze existing and proposed merchandise sets with regards to sales/space productivity and inventory/space productivity. Built and maintained working relationship with merchandising, suppliers, store operations, and all other cross-functional teams.

Oversaw supply planning function on base and promotional usage for all Smallwares items to ensure continuous supply to restaurants. Managed relationship and communication with each concept, third party supply planning team, Smallwares warehouse, suppliers, and Darden purchasing team. Analyzed national and regional promotional forecast/projections on menu change impacts, high-volume products, and new product rollouts and tests.

Reviewed inventory position with seafood logistics analyst weekly to ensure product placement. Communicated with total quality team daily concerning product availability. Interacted with culinary support and product planning team. Aided buyers with promotions and tests of respective items within each concept. Communicated to suppliers of promotion or testing of items with forecasts. Resolved fresh fish opportunities at restaurants within 24 hours to 48 hours, including outage, poor quality, and distributor issues. Maintained master product documents, including price changes and set up new products and new suppliers. Provided data reports to buyers where needed. Worked with suppliers navigating and entering information into system. Created SOPs for positions. Corresponded, researched, and resolved price discrepancies. Interacted with team to resolve issues that restaurants encounter. Researched and resolved beverage alcohol and CO2 outages at restaurants within 24 to 48 hours. Communicated with supplier of beverage alcohol and CO2 outages at restaurants. Tracked all beverage alcohol outages at restaurants to allow for review of supplier performance. Followed up with restaurants upon receipt of call or email concerning issue. Collaborated with beverage center of excellence in requesting and compiling with national account pricing for wines.

Purchased and managed inventory 2 warehouses for categories of dinnerware, glassware, and flatware with annual combined sales of approximately $18MM.

Purchased and managed inventory for manufacturing plant for products including cardboard, plastic bottles, bottle lids, desiccant packets, etc. Determined economic order quantities, addressed potential shortages, and monitored inventory levels by analyzing MRP

Developed key performance indicators for DC and modified indicators.

Maintained, monitored, and audited inventory for distribution center.

Coordinated daily activities in supporting the distribution center.