Todd Howell

Subject Matter Expert for Beverage Alcohol Sourcing and Distribution. Project contract basis serving multistate operators. Sourcing projects include SKU rationalization, menu design, training, maximizing menu print and conference support rebates, COGS reduction techniques, inventory control, scorecarding, case/keg order controls, and price audits.

Led pharmaceutical, medical equipment and supply sourcing, negotiations, P2P, inventory control, and logistics networks. Launched and managed retail and direct to consumer medical grade skincare programs. Maximized free goods channeled to Operations and Sales teams to build personal experience and drive employee engagement and retention.

Achievements:

●Designed, negotiated and launched Xeomin, which offered guests an identical outcome as Botox and reduced COGS by 50% (30% guest price reduction and +20% margin). Earned $8M in direct annual rebates plus $710K in free equipment warranties. Provided free samples worth $1.5M to improve employee experience levels and drive sales, a first for Ideal Image and likely for the industry in a chain environment.

●Championed a unique free goods opportunity that instantly created $733K in cash for enhanced local marketing programs to replace supplier driven national advertising budgets of the past, likely another industry first.

●Designed a holistic loss prevention platform across 150+ company owned clinics and a portfolio of high value SKUs, enabled by a servant leadership approach with 1200 RN’s in the field and powered by a customized BI solution. Cross functional efforts reduced inventory losses by 75% or over $200K/quarter.

●Led sourcing, supply inventory, support and logistics of high value medical equipment including Coolsculpting, Ultherapy, Candela and Sciton. Optimized our logistics network for shipping high value, fragile medical equipment, saving $1000 for each unit shipped, ensuring zero damage over 3 years and with rapid deployment across the US.

●Via safety stock optimization, average inventory per clinic was reduced from $54K/clinic to $37K, freeing $2.4M in cash, while delivering a career high service level of 99.96% consistently in 2021, 2022 and 2023.

●Managed a new eCommerce logistics platform and 3PL for skincare direct to consumer fulfillment that delivered $2M in sales in the first 3 months, while tightly controlling ongoing retail obsolescence via tactical S&OP efforts.

●Reduced inventory investment by $900K by partnering with a leading manufacturer to reduce production units of measure on 3 slow moving SKUs.

●Launched Ideal Image’s first competitive 2nd source project that saved $340K in 2023 while reducing supply chain risk by optimizing safety stock. This project also enabled visibility and one time P/L recognition of $500K in field inventory.

●Designed ROI enhancing approaches to managing $3.5M in free Rx sample inventory received annually.

Recruited, trained, and motivated a talented and diverse team to replace the entire procurement function during corporate headquarter relocation from Portland, OR to Orlando, FL in the summer of 2017. This team controlled $55M in food spend, $30M in facilities and $45M in utilities. We optimized a broad series of resident touchpoints through collaboration, including 1) foodservice by listening to residents, culinary, and distributors 2) room FFE by engaging with designers, importers and customized and flexible P2P solutions and 3) sustainability by bringing together leaders in HVAC, electrical and plumbing, enabled by new technologies and data mining.

Achievements:

●Led Covid pandemic response that saved 100s, if not 1000s of lives, by pivoting from communal dining to room service exclusively (90K/day), scouring the grey market for PPE, and orchestrating emergency bus networks to transport 1000s to vaccination centers in partnership with local health departments across the US, often on the first day they opened. In the following 6 weeks, 65 positive Covid communities across the US was reduced to 0.

●Designed an industry first COGS report in BI, integrating 6 unique deviated pricing and rebate streams at the SKU level.

●Designed analytics and S&OP tactics to ensure 99.0% case fill rates across 60 Sysco warehouses, with new controls over previous SKU level substitutions that had disadvantaged guest and financial performance.

●Reduced SKU count from 40,000 to 6,000 in the food category through chef and resident supported category reviews, tastings and triangle tests. This improved COGS, resident satisfaction scores, and built stronger strategic partnerships with manufacturers and GPOs.

●Delivered $728K in cost savings and improved quality via competitive food reviews in our first 180 days.

●Optimized the beef category by channeling volume into the 2 most versatile SKUs, ground and bottom round, which delivered $607K in annual savings, reduced inventory and expiration risk, and drove guest satisfaction to a record high 86% score.

●Ensured collaboration, alignment and detailed reporting on CapX projects for buildings owned by other partners.

●Negotiated SAP/Ariba contract and optimized technical platform which reduced AP labor input, delivered cost savings ($2M) and improved quality controls over $30M annually in facilities, sustainability, construction, HVAC, equipment, furnishing and appliance purchases.

●Developed 1st industry partnership with Amazon Business Prime, which enabled over 10,000 labor hours/quarter to be reinvested into guest services, previously wasted on retail visits for tail spend items.

●Built 1st industry partnership with Uber, supplementing community owned bus and driver resources.

●Negotiated Spectrum cable TV contract for 103 communities that yielded a new $2M rebate, $860K annual savings, enhanced programming, and improved customer experience.

●Negotiated $894K in cost savings in unit turn carpet via a competitive RFP and Ariba P2P based audit controls.

●Designed FFE programs that delivered standardized furniture, kitchen, bathroom and lighting packages with regionalize décor, enabling full room or a la carte purchasing via Ariba P2P controls.

●Managed supply and resident evacuation during hurricanes, wildfires and other disasters, partnering with local fire/rescue teams to ensure safe loading/unloading. Emergency drivers were welcomed into our regional communities that received evacuees, ensuring days long engagement and ongoing commitment to our residents throughout the event.

●Delivered $250K through produce purchasing source compliance, while ensuring food safety for a high risk population.

●Engaged with nationwide utility rebate programs available for sustainability projects, including in-room motion/infrared HVAC controls and water conservation controls.

●Partnered with Facilities on loss prevention for high value power tools.

●Negotiated $270K in sponsorship support for our first virtual leadership conference in September 2020, with 1400 field associates successfully engaged. Prior traditional in-person conferences yielded over $400K in supplier support.

●Designed Holiday Retirement’s first Sustainability platform, orchestrating support from a cross functional team to push our messaging through print and digital marketing to current and potential residents, associates, and investors.

●Sourced and launched washable “room service” clamshells, avoiding $200K/month in Styrofoam spend and 12 million cubic feet of annual waste stream into landfills.

Led 3 internal and 1 outsourced Purchasing Manager(s) with categories as varied as commodities, desserts, appetizers, packaging, non-alcohol beverage and dairy worth $460 million in annual spend. Directly managed the beverage alcohol category worth $200 million, and supported end to end solutions including innovation, packaging and brand design, blending, marketing, menu design, finance, sales incentives, training, operations simplification, and event management.

Achievements:

Food, Beverage and Packaging Sourcing

●Led team through strategic food sourcing projects that delivered COGS reductions of $9.9 million in FY14 and $8.7 million in FY15.

●Renegotiated a strategic partnership with HAVI, a leader in packaging, to save $2.2 million in COGS, boosted internal service to concepts and eliminated $500,000 in additional tooling and finished goods exposure with suppliers for Olive Garden.

●Administered RFPs that enabled $7.2 million in additional beverage sales margin in FY17 with $9.0 million secured into FY18.

●Personally delivered $12.6 million in COGS reductions in FY15 across multiple beverage and packaging sourcing projects.

●Negotiated an additional $1.75 million in supplier rebates in FY17, a 25% increase over the prior year.

●Delivered $1.2 million in beverage price audit value in the first 6 months of FY17.

●Designed detailed state by state pricing structures to reduce COGS by 40% for LTO’s like Capital Grille’s Generous Pour.

●Designed and launched wines and spirits sold in the open market that delivered $4.0 million in annual licensing revenue in FY17.

Logistics and Service

●Employed risk mitigation strategies through 2nd and 3rd source development, business continuity planning and tactical finished goods and raw materials management.

●Guided supplier production schedules for LTO promotions.

●Launched hundreds of SKUs annually into the most complex of all domestic supply chains, the 3-tier system.

●Managed service on 10,000+ ongoing SKUs through 1,000+ local distributors across the US.

Events

●Supported 3 General Manager conferences annually for over 2,000 attendees, each with customized and interactive educational breakout sessions.

●Secured $5M+ in supply support for each annual conference cycle, along with 100’s of case of wine, spirits and beer.

●Secured master sommeliers for tasting events and competitive cocktail competitions that awarded a future menu LTO.

●Led strategy presentations at each event to industry senior leadership.

Led sourcing initiatives, R&D (wine list, mixology, private labels) and supported digital marketing, operational simplicity, and training initiatives. Managed service, product launches and pricing across 50 states in the most complex supply chain, with over 1000 distributors serving 1500 restaurants over 10,000 unique, globally sourced SKUs.

Achievements:

●Developed a process to extract value for free goods during product launches and deliver to digital media marketing initiatives. The first of these launches netted $432,000.

●Designed and implemented a management alert system that saved $1.5 million annually with high velocity wines, spirits and draft beer SKUs being purchased in full cases/large kegs.

●Developed an industry first price auditing system for 2,000 restaurants in 50 states and over 200 wines by the glass SKUs which saved Darden over $900K annually in FY12.

●Received Darden’s “Brilliance Award” in 2011 for leading beverage cost savings.

Managed a team of four product supply analysts responsible for $2 billion annually in delivered food, beverage and restaurants supplies.

Achievements:

●Produced best class inventory control for 6 concepts, 2000 restaurants, 3300 SKUs, 12 distribution centers and 3 consolidation (ReD) centers in North America.

●Team delivered case fill levels of 99.93% while limiting concept’s product obsolescence/expedite freight exposure to .047% of annual revenue ($3.3 million) in an LTO promotion heavy environment with highly perishable products.

●Restaurant satisfaction rose from 4.29 to a record score of 4.43 out of 5.

●Team was responsible for daily S&OP interface with concept product planning, and managed rollouts for 75 LTO promotion events, 105 tests, and 1100 new SKUs annually.

●Supported complex and time sensitive FDA recall and withdrawal actions across Darden’s supply chain.

Supply Chain Systems

Represented Darden Supply Chain on strategic IT development projects.

●Developed ERP finished goods visibility reporting for 1st and 2ndtier distribution channels.

●Oracle Purchasing Module “Super User” responsibilities for development and testing initiatives.

●Project team member for the integration of Oracle’s Demantra statistical forecasting system.

●Business Intelligence Steering Committee member.

Supervised a six-person team that managed construction material and equipment logistics supporting 60 to 80 new restaurants and 150 remodels annually. Integrated two equipment service and support call centers to design a more efficient single team with two supervisors and 20 service and supply professionals.

Achievements:

●Bid and negotiated project freight costs between competing carriers, and reported PO line level freight cost variance (due to design change orders or construction delays).

●Led Resupply warehouse’s inventory control, statistical forecasting, and replenishment purchasing functions for over $40 million worth of durable material sold annually.

• Designed an integrated consolidation (ReD) network utilizing an origin-centric approach, which limited inbound miles, connected all DCs to all consolidation points, and ensured adequate delivery frequency yielding exceptional customer service. Saved Darden nearly $12 million in freight cost while delivering 99.9% service fill.

Managed operations for one of NDC’s largest distribution centers with 250,000 sq ft. and 36 DSD trucks generating $148 million in annual revenue on 2 million cases shipped. Led a team of 100 members in Warehousing, Inventory Control, Customer Service, Transportation, A/P and A/R.

Achievements:

●Responsible for detailed P/L reporting for five sales divisions, including rebates for over $1 million monthly in vendor support for placement incentives, free goods, shelf sets, and local marketing support.

●Developed and implemented a program targeting repeat customer credits, which reduced returned merchandise from chain grocery accounts by 25%.

●Lowered over 90-day A/R by 90% with a redesigned collection processes.

●Lowered inventory shortage by $40,000 through improved physical inventory procedures, tighter security, and stricter driver collection requirements.

●Implemented cross-training initiatives to ensure productivity and maintained the lowest office staffing levels of any NDC branch, while reducing overtime by 48%.

Managed $20 million in wine and spirits inventory, with control of a $140 million purchasing budget. Provided logistics support for five sales divisions generating $170 million in annual sales. Directed domestic and international wine and spirits logistics, including high volume LTL consolidation networks in California, New Jersey, France and Italy.