Taylor Marx (MS-ADS ‘17), Head of Enterprise Data at Farmer’s Fridge and UChicago alum, joined the undergraduate Data Science Society for an event organized by the Data Science Institute to share insights from one of the most innovative startups in the Midwest. 

After graduating from the Master’s in Applied Data Science program (then called the Analytics Program) at UChicago in 2017, Taylor joined Farmer’s Fridge as one of its first employees. Since then, his role has expanded greatly to include overseeing the team of data scientists, analytics and data engineers, reporting and business intelligence analysts, and the data product team, observing over time how they field has shifted around new technological developments, especially with the recent proliferation of AI. 

With 2,000 fridges across 15 states collecting data each day, the scope of data at Farmer’s Fridge can be daunting. Taylor shared insights with students on how to prioritize and untangle what really matters with examples around airport revenue, time of day, inflation, customer retention, and more. 

One example included shifting airport projections during the COVID-19 pandemic. Appropriately stocking and servicing fridges is key to profitable operations and happy customers. With airport traffic extremely difficult to predict day-to-day and week-to-week using internal data during the pandemic, his team discovered a public dataset from the TSA detailing daily security checkpoint passthroughs. They found these numbers correlated by ~90% to the amount of food being purchased from their machines, unlocking a new category of external data sources to inform Farmer’s Fridge’s internal operations. Taylor has built his team and their tech stack to accommodate these diverse data sets and answer questions that impact the business’ day to day operations. He shared with students how Farmer’s Fridge has evolved their tools and data cycle over time, helping students understand how they’ve leveraged tools like Snowflake, Hex, and Dagster in different ways as the company and the landscape around it has shifted.

He also shared insights for students looking to go into data science, including the proliferation of roles that may be “data scientist” in name, but in actuality operate as business intelligence analysts tasked with dashboard creation, and how to navigate that as students look for opportunities. He also recommended students look for side projects that align with their passions, like diving into the data collected and analyzed for a sport you watch and creating your own analyses to build up the muscles of a data scientist.

Students asked questions about working at an innovative company revolutionizing how fresh food is delivered and made available to millions of consumers, including issues of data security, predicting outlier events, price adjustments, and the psychology of purchasing behavior. 

This event was supported by the Data Science Institute, which offers programs and partnership opportunities for faculty, students, and organizations from diverse sectors. Keep an eye out for future DSI events and opportunities to engage with speakers like Taylor in the future on the DSI event page, and reach out to Anne Brown, Director of Corporate Partnerships, for more information. 

The Data Science Society hosts weekly events on Tuesday evenings. Reach out to Cynthia Zeng or Vincent Zheng, co-presidents of DSS, for more information on the undergraduate group.