Director, Food Forecasting & Demand Planning

About Us

Imagine: 30 unique restaurants to order from, brought to your door in under 30 minutes. That’s what our customers experience.

At Wonder, we want to make world-class food within reach, no matter where you live. That’s why we’ve created a vertically integrated, new standard of dining that will allow you to enjoy menus from award-winning chefs and iconic restaurants across the country, all in one place. Our elevated brick + mortar locations will offer pick up and dine in options, as well as delivery to your home.

As a food-tech startup backed by top-tier venture capitalists and led by a team of experienced entrepreneurs—including some of the most accomplished leaders in the technology, culinary, and logistics industries—we’re growing. Join us in pioneering a new category of dining called “Fast-Fine”, and revolutionizing the way people eat.

About the role

A special and unique value Wonder offers our customers is the ability to order from 30 different restaurants out of 1 physical location. Whether customers order from our app, or walk into a Wonder location, customers are offered a generous assortment of cuisine and restaurant menu options to order from in just one single order, down to the unit level. This vast assortment creates a unique challenge, creating a very complex forecasting and logistics challenge far exceeding typical restaurant operations. Whereas the average QSR (Quick Service Restaurant) manages around 60 distinct SKUs, we are managing 10X the magnitude. 

As the Director of Forecast and Planning, you will be responsible for the models and systems that determine how much of each SKU we need to produce and send to our restaurants. You will completely own two critical business KPIs: 

1. Expiry waste as a percent of revenue
2. Stockouts due to forecasting  

Your role goes beyond simply creating accurate forecasts; it involves improving the direct business impacts of forecasting inaccuracies. Specifically, you will have ownership over the following: 

• Team Management: Lead and develop analytics and product team members to support forecasting and planning operations.
• Stakeholder Collaboration: Build and maintain strong relationships with key stakeholders, including Culinary Production, Distribution, Growth, and Marketing, to improve forecasting accuracy and gather feedback for new features and system improvements.
• Data and Reporting: Drive data initiatives, including measuring forecast accuracy, creating dashboards for waste and stockouts, conducting deep-dive and ad-hoc analyses to improve KPIs, and enhancing automated Root Cause Analysis (RCA) logic and reporting.
• Product Leadership: Lead the development and management of our forecasting and planning products, including:
• Forecast Platform & Tools: Develop models and tools to forecast demand at every Wonder location, accounting for marketing activities and events.
• Service Levels System: Balance the trade-off between waste and stockouts by calculating optimal service levels that minimize costs.
• Inventory Planning System: Determine production levels of our SKUs based on current state, forecast, and service levels. 

At the core of this role, your goal is to drive operational improvement by working closely with production, logistics, operations, and other product and tech teams. 

The experience you have

• Forecasting Expertise: 10-12+ years of experience in forecasting and forecasting systems, with at least:
  • 5+ years of experience forecasting perishable items (e.g., grocery, fresh food manufacturing, or fresh food supply chain).
  • 5+ years of experience leading the development of forecasting tools and systems, including Machine Learning models.
  • 3+ years of experience managing a technical team (e.g., PMs, Analysts, Data Scientists).
• Proven Track Record: Demonstrated success in improving forecast accuracy and delivering on operational or financial KPIs.
• Analytical Skills: Exceptional analytical and quantitative skills, with expertise in SQL or Python. Ability to use data and metrics to support assumptions, recommendations, and actions, and a willingness to perform detailed analyses to assess and identify root causes.
• Data S