Merchandising Intern
Acme Markets – Merchandising Intern – Summer 2019 – May 20th, 2019 – August 9th, 2019
Acme Markets is one of the leading food and drug retailers in the Delaware Valley. They have approximately 165 stores and handled over 17,000 employees. Over the summer of 2019 I was the Merchandising Intern at their corporate office in Malvern, PA. In this role, I worked with and reported to 3 managers of the produce department and completed tasks that they assigned using software such as excel, APEX, and Gold. I was responsible for generating, organizing, and reporting weekly sale recaps. I was also responsible at some points for updating the ad pricing into Acme systems, so that the POS systems at the stores would receive the correct pricing for an upcoming sale. One project I had was to match product’ UPCs with other ones that were generated during a conversion with a newer system. During the project I got to reach out to vendors and look into Acme Systems to see how a business handles and comprehends large amounts of data. Another project I had was to enhance the department head training program. I was given the opportunity to be a team lead during this project, working with 3 other interns. Our goal was to study, survey and make recommendations on how Acme can enhance their existing program. During this, I was able to use my experience from 3506, Digital Solutions Studio, to analyze the project from a MIS perspective. I created a survey, consisting of relevant questions, to send out to all departments heads. This data was transformed into graphs that highlighted how their department heads thought. I conducted one-on-one interviews, organized the team, keeping our project goals relevant and created business rules for Acme to follow so they could ensure a structure program was in place. On the last day of the internship, our group had to present our project to the executives of Acme. So having completed 3506, I was able to recommend and help to create a well structure presentation with our conclusions that consistence of the As-is of the program, our approach to enhancements, actors & personas, objectives of the program, and financial statements. Other courses like 3506, Enterprise IT Architecture, helped me grasp what goes into Acme’s systems and how they maintain that. I got the opportunity to spend a day in the field with Acme’s maintenance manager, Joe Vaccaro. He is responsible for keeping Acme stores functioning, whether it be a AC issue, a POS system issue, roofs leakage, or an appliance issue. His job is too hire vendors and create project scope documents for various projects that Acme approves of. I got to see their latest project which was an implementation of solar panels on several roofs of Acme. It was really awesome to see their project almost completed in person and with my experience from 3506, I was able to understand how this project went from a planning stage, to an implementation stage, to finally an (almost) completed stage.
I developed a lot over the summer, and gained many educational experiences. I had a great time with Acme Markets as their intern over the summer of 2019.