Assortment Optimization Lead

Farmer's Fridge Careers•Chicago, IL

About The Position

Farmer’s Fridge is seeking an analytical, commercially minded Assortment Optimization Lead for its Channel Strategy team. The role translates menu strategy into assortment and merchandising decisions for more than 2,000 smart fridges and supports assortment strategy at retail locations. The position owns how menu strategy is applied at individual fridges and retail accounts, works within established strategy guardrails, and uses performance evidence to recommend when those guardrails should change. The role focuses on optimizing net product margin per slot while balancing sales, margin, sell-through, and food waste. It uses transaction and consumer purchase data to make location-level decisions, assess product and layout changes, and improve assortment models and planogram rules. The position works closely with Channel Strategy leadership and cross-functional partners, including Procurement, Operations, Demand Planning, Marketing, Menu, Revenue Growth Management, and Fridge Lifecycle teams.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Business, Economics, Statistics, Marketing, or a related quantitative field.
5–7 years of professional experience, including at least 2 years of direct experience in assortment planning, space planning, merchandising analytics, commercial analytics, or a comparable role; ideally in a business with a physical, space-constrained footprint.
Demonstrated experience making store-, cluster-, or location-level assortment decisions using large, granular transaction or point-of-sale data and measuring results.
Strong data analytics skills and experience building optimization or decision models using Python, R, SQL, or advanced spreadsheet tools.
Working knowledge of space productivity, including facings, adjacencies, and sales and margin per unit of space.
Experience working with AI tools to build analyses faster, while checking their output for accuracy and treating AI as a tool rather than the primary thinker.
Strong financial acumen and fluency in product margin, waste, and trade-offs among sales, margin, and sell-through.
High ownership and a bias toward action; ability to work hands-on, iterate quickly, and drive answers in a lean, fast-moving environment.

Nice To Haves

Experience with fresh or short-shelf-life products, where waste is part of assortment decisions.
Experience in unattended retail, micro-markets, vending, or convenience.
Experience with localized or cluster-based assortment strategies.
Experience designing and interpreting in-market tests of assortment or layout changes.
Experience with space-planning or planograms.

Responsibilities

Run and continuously improve optimization models that decide which products go into each fridge and how many slots each product receives, maximizing net product margin within menu strategy.
Decide which fridges and slots receive new product launches and which products they replace.
Model projected margin, sales, and waste impacts before assortment changes, then measure actual results against projections, explain gaps, and improve the model.
Own fridge merchandising, including product placement, facings, and adjacencies across digital and physical environments; develop scalable planogram rules.
Own the rotation calendar and planogram reset waves, including slot changes, timing of rotational and limited-time-offer products, and sequencing to support measurement of impact.
Coordinate with Procurement, Operations, and Demand Planning to ensure planogram resets are implemented successfully.
Partner with Demand Planning to establish sell-through and waste targets, track performance across the network, diagnose underperforming slots, and act on findings with cross-functional teams.
Analyze consumer-level purchase data to understand purchasing patterns, repeat behavior, and substitution; partner with Marketing to develop a shared view of customers and improve assortment and menu decisions.
Use performance data to identify gaps between menu strategy and point-of-sale results, present evidence, and collaborate on adjustments to strategy and guardrails.
Partner with Revenue Growth Management and Fridge Lifecycle teams to assess how assortment affects sales and margin and inform management of underperforming fridges and retail locations.
Build, improve, and document assortment models, slot-level scorecards, planogram rules, and repeatable playbooks for decisions across the fridge network.

Benefits

Medical, dental, and vision insurance, with multiple plans available.
401(k) with immediate employer match vesting.
Paid time off, including vacation, sick leave, and holidays.
Paid sabbatical after five years of service.
Employee discounts.
Employee Assistance Program (EAP).
Company performance-based bonuses and equity.
Daily Farmer’s Fridge meals and office snacks.
Employee input into menu creation, including regular tasting panels.
Cross-functional collaboration, access to leadership, and regular business updates.