Representing premium brands to outstanding retailers

As a pivotal leader at SpartanNash, a Fortune 400 wholesaler/retailer supplying over 2,100 independent grocery retail locations and 148 corporate-owned stores across 9 states and U.S. Military commissaries globally, I spearhead retail operations, promotions, and engineered labor standards. My role focuses on ensuring departmental plans, programs, and initiatives achieve budgeted sales, margin, and associate satisfaction objectives. Key highlights of my contributions include:Develop labor standards, models, forecasts, and budgets for optimal staffing and resource allocation.Implement task-based scheduling and time tracking systems to boost productivity and reduce labor costs.Execute real-time labor plans via mobile communication for effective adjustments.Support governance of task and food safety compliance while maintaining KPI dashboards for performance tracking.Identify, develop, and implement process and performance improvements to boost operational efficiency and profitability.Prioritize turnover reduction and labor optimization to align with business goals.Foster cross-utilization of workforce skills for enhanced operational flexibility.

Directed merchandising operations and promotions, consistently surpassing budgeted sales and profit goals in 2020, 2021, and 2022, resulting in a 200% bonus payout for the retail division.Oversaw financial data analysis to enhance promotional planning, budgeting, and forecasting accuracy, leading to improved post-promotion analysis and program effectiveness.Strategized for the growth, market share gain, and sustainability of "own brands," outperforming competitors in market share growth.Fostered effective internal and external relationships, driving collaborative efforts with cross-functional teams and vendors to increase market share, customer loyalty, and profitability, exceeding company goals for customer transactions and basket size.Identified opportunities and implemented process improvements, including developing comprehensive training manuals and programs to enhance freshness, food safety standards, and customer satisfaction ratings.

Responsible for all aspects of category management, procurement, opportunity buy, multi-cultural, budgeting, analytics and financial results. Responsible for center store relationship with operations for 480 corporate stores and 900+ licensee operators. Center store includes grocery, dairy, frozen, gm, alcohol, health and beauty, deli and in-store bakery; 77% of wholesale shipments and retail sales of $6 billion attributed to center store. Developed and implemented a full department restructure including new roles and responsibilities for all associates. Maintained 2017 center store service level of 98.7% exceeded goal of 98%. Reduced carrying inventory costs by over $60mm while exceeding service level objectives for 17 distribution centers through implementing improved inventory management practices. Daily inventory warehouse inventory exceeded $200mm. Created new ad and promotional strategy for licensee operators and corporate stores that resulted in a 29% increase in promotional sales. Redesigned brand and item strategy (e.g., setting all product goals / standards, developing a new QA process). Implemented new shopper-centric pricing strategy to improve competitive position to include web-based price scrapes, on the ground price checks and price clustering to weight margins and retails. Led center store analytics team in development of new software reporting using Micro Strategies, Retek and homegrown systems to improve service level, in stock positioning and inventory carrying costs.

Assessed and reshaped the organization for future positioning, including potential sale of company. Provided analysis and recommendations concerning operational guidelines, assortment, pricing, promotion, display planning and marketing/advertising; managed revenue and overall P&L responsibility. Developed Category Management strategies for fresh that were incorporated organization wide. Instituted partnership with the NFL and the NY Jets Football Organization. Negotiated contract to be the first supermarket in the U.S. to participate in Amazon Prime Now online shopping.

Led the development of a world-class regional division focused on regional products and culture. Collaborated with operations, store management, marketing, sales, consumer insights, buyers, category managers, replenishment teams and shopper marketing groups. Established business strategies that achieved quarterly and annual sales and profit goals. Grew local market share by over 10%; highest growth rate for all divisions. Partnered with the Director of Marketing to develop annual promotional plans and local events. Worked with Store Operations teams to implement localization for in-store merchandising, sales plan compliance, store layout and design, plan-o-gram integrity, seasonal displays and holiday execution. Developed a localized advertising and marketing plan, including pricing strategies.

Devised and executed demographic and economic “clustering” strategies utilizing Spectra, Nielsen, IRI, Census and TLOG transactions. Managed a team of field directors and specialists as well as senior category managers, category managers, analysts and clerical. Responsible for all aspects of the Food Basics discount format, including store design, layout, product mix, promotion and contribution to profit. Delivered improved sales results in Food Basics; growing revenues from $150 million and loss of $12.5 million annually to annual revenue of $260 million and profit of $5 million; reshaped Food Basics into a top multicultural merchandiser in the United States. Managed center store direct delivery (DSD) business and 25% of warehouse shipments with annual gross sales of $2.1 billion dollars. Accountable for the natural, organic, specialty and multi-cultural categories. Designed new full category review format to include regional assortments and plan-o-gram implementation. Expanded cross merchandising and combined marketing programs; guided “Achieve Category Excellence” (ACE) and “Demand-Tec” initiatives. Supervised integration and consolidation of resources of Pathmark and A&P U.S., including all areas of merchandising, operations, procurement and analytics, product rationalization, vendor negotiations and branding.