Jordyn Maurer ’26 spent the summer before her senior year mining data to build the perfect pizza.
Maurer, a data analytics major with an economics concentration and a minor in mathematics, interned as a data wrangler for The Kroger Co., a national grocery chain of more than 2,700 stores headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio.
The pizza project was just one small slice of her internship, which she says opened her eyes to a possible career path, as well as to the complex machinations required to keep a major business running and its customers happy.
She may never look at the frozen food aisle of a grocery store in the same way again.
Maurer applied to the internship to obtain some real-world experience in business data analytics, preferably while living at home in the Cincinnati area.
She found what she was looking for. On any given day, she might dial into conference calls with hundreds of other Kroger employees, talk to suppliers about reducing the cost of ingredients, or analyze the competition to see how Kroger might gain an edge.
“I’m working with raw data to see where we can improve costs,” she said.
She worked in enterprise sourcing, a part of the business that seeks to optimize the supply chain and ensure that products hit the shelves in the most cost-effective way, without compromising quality or customer satisfaction.
“I had never even heard of sourcing before this,” she said. “It’s different than I expected, but in a good way. It’s very rewarding to go into the store and see that I had a piece in something.”
Her piece of Kroger was the frozen food section, specifically the Kroger house brand items found there.
She crunched numbers but also prowled store aisles. For the pizza project, she found herself comparing box sizes and even counting the pepperoni slices on competing brands.
She learned that every decision — say, adding or subtracting a single slice of pepperoni — can create a ripple of effects both pro and con.
“Making that one change affects so many lines of production,” she said. “There is a lot of risk mitigation.”
While she doesn’t see herself continuing on the sourcing end of economics after graduation, she discovered that she really enjoys data visualization, the process of representing data in a way that is easy for others to understand.
“I love giving presentations,” she said.
And she made strong connections within Kroger, including its data center.
“I’ve been grateful for the network that they’ve helped me build,” she said.
If she has advice for other students, it is to push through any bouts of “imposter syndrome” when applying for internships.
“I was hesitant to apply to a lot of things,” she said. “Don’t shut yourself down before they even look at you.”
And once in, make the most of the opportunities.
“I was open to trying whatever was thrown at me,” she said. “It’s been a lot of fun. Even if it’s something you don’t see yourself doing in the future, you’re getting something out of it.”
