Data and Reporting Intern, Chartwells Higher Ed / University of Houston

The Data and Reporting Intern supports the dining services team by gathering, organizing, analyzing, and maintaining data related to meal plans, sales activity, promotions, and student feedback. This role supports recurring reporting and helps identify trends and insights that allow the team to better understand dining performance, student engagement, and meal plan revenue opportunities.

Key Responsibilities

Meal Plan Data & Reporting

• Organize and maintain meal plan sales, participation, and usage data.
• Track meal plan enrollment, revenue, meal swipe usage, and declining balance activity.
• Assist with identifying trends in meal plan participation and purchasing behavior.
• Compare performance across time periods, plan types, and student segments when data is available.
• Support reporting for meal plan promotions and sales initiatives.

Sales & Performance Reporting

• Collect, organize, and analyze sales, transaction, and guest count data.
• Maintain recurring spreadsheets and performance reports for dining leadership.
• Track sales performance across dining locations, promotions, and special programs.
• Assist with comparing actual performance to prior periods, goals, and available benchmarks.
• Help identify trends, variances, and opportunities within dining data.
• Review data for accuracy and flag inconsistencies or missing information.

Student Feedback & Engagement

• Organize student feedback from surveys and other feedback platforms.
• Track recurring themes related to food quality, service, value, and convenience.
• Assist with summarizing survey results and identifying trends in student feedback.
• Support measurement and reporting for dining events, promotions, and student engagement initiatives.

Reporting & Administrative Support

• Build and maintain organized spreadsheets, trackers, and recurring reports.
• Assist with preparing data summaries for dining leadership and university partners.
• Support special data and reporting projects.
• Maintain accurate department records and documentation.
• Perform other related duties as assigned.

Qualifications

• High school diploma or equivalent required.
• Currently enrolled in college or pursuing a degree preferred.
• Intermediate Microsoft Excel skills, with the ability to organize, analyze, and summarize data.
• Experience using formulas and functions such as SUM, AVERAGE, COUNTIF/COUNTIFS, SUMIF/SUMIFS, IF statements, and XLOOKUP/VLOOKUP.
• Ability to sort, filter, clean, and compare data across spreadsheets.
• Familiarity with PivotTables, charts, and basic data visualization.
• Strong attention to detail and ability to identify inconsistencies in data.
• Strong organizational and communication skills.
• Ability to work independently while managing recurring deadlines.
• Willingness and ability to learn new reporting systems and processes.

Preferred Qualifications

• College coursework in business, analytics, finance, accounting, marketing, information systems, economics, or a related field.
• Experience working with Excel or Google Sheets for reporting or analysis.
• Familiarity with dashboards or data visualization tools is a plus but not required.
• Previous office, administrative, reporting, or analytical experience preferred but not required.

Learning Objectives

• Understand how data supports business decisions – Learn how meal plan, sales, promotional, and student feedback data is used to make marketing and dining business decisions.
• Identify meaningful trends and opportunities – Review reports to recognize changes in sales, participation, customer behavior, and engagement, and explain why those changes may matter to the business.
• Turn data into actionable insights – Move beyond reporting numbers to identify key takeaways and recommend potential next steps for marketing, promotions, meal plan sales, or student engagement.
• Measure marketing and promotional performance – Learn how to evaluate whether a promotion, event, or campaign was successful by comparing results to goals, previous periods, or other available benchmarks.
• Understand the customer through data – Use available meal plan, purchasing, and feedback data to better understand student needs, behaviors, preferences, and opportunities for engagement.
• Communicate data clearly to different audiences – Practice turning detailed information into simple summaries, key takeaways, and presentations that dining leadership and university partners can quickly understand.
• Develop strong reporting habits – Learn the importance of accuracy, consistency, deadlines, documentation, and identifying missing or questionable information before reports are shared.
• Connect marketing activity to business results – Develop an understanding of how marketing efforts can influence participation, traffic, sales, meal plan purchases, and overall program performance.

This is a paid intern position; however, it is not eligible for paid time off (PTO) or benefits such as medical, dental, vision, etc.