Hungryroot Adds Executives from Grubhub and KAYAK for Top Roles
Hungryroot, the first and only AI-powered personalized grocery service, has appointed Alex Weinstein as Chief Digital Officer and Stephanie Retcho as Chief Marketing Officer. This announcement comes on the heels of a recent Series C Round led by L Catterton to help grow the team, invest in automation technology and scale its overall marketing efforts.
Weinstein hails from Grubhub, where he previously served as Senior Vice President of Growth, while Retcho was formerly KAYAK’s Chief Marketing Officer and will be entering as Hungryroot’s first-ever CMO. Both Weinstein and Retcho will play a critical role in transforming the brand’s overall marketing and digital strategy as the company continues to experience accelerated growth and demand for its service.
“2021 has been a pivotal year for Hungryroot as we continue to experience significant growth in both customer acquisition and retention,” said Ben McKean, Founder and CEO of Hungryroot. “We’re currently hyper-focused on investing in our industry-leading predictive modeling technology, driving continued success through performance marketing and creating a strong competitive advantage that benefits our customers. Alex will be key in helping to drive our AI advancements and digital efforts forward from a performance marketing perspective, while Stephanie will lead the charge in owning our personal grocer messaging and scaling brand marketing.”
As Hungryroot’s new Chief Digital Officer, Weinstein will focus on creating an industry-leading grocery shopping experience through its proprietary technology. Combining the company’s deep expertise in food science with machine learning best practices, Weinstein will expand its data-driven understanding of consumer’s grocery preferences to create the best possible AI-enabled grocery experience available today. Weinstein has extensive experience driving growth and previously served as Senior Vice President of Growth at Grubhub, where he increased the company’s top line from $500M to $2B. Prior to Grubhub, he led eBay’s marketing technology and personalization efforts and spent seven years at Microsoft driving platform and big data initiatives.
Retcho joins Hungryroot as its first-ever Chief Marketing Officer and will be responsible for creating differentiation for Hungryroot’s personal grocery brand and connecting it to consumers, while driving growth through its marketing efforts and strategic partnerships. Retcho brings more than 20 years of experience, which includes having served as CMO of KAYAK where she led an international team, overseeing all aspects of marketing, through six consecutive years of growth that included their IPO and subsequent acquisition by Booking Holdings. Prior to KAYAK, Retcho held management positions at top ad agencies such as TBWA Chiat Day and McCann Erickson.
In addition to these new hires, Hungryroot recently promoted two of its existing employees to its C-Suite team. Dave Kong, who has been with Hungryroot since inception, was promoted to Chief Technology Officer and will be leading the charge in optimizing its AI-enabled platform and proprietary algorithm further based on customer preference, recipe variety and inventory stock. Kong has a background in computer science and engineering, having previously worked for Groupon, Savored and Microsoft.
Luke Vaccaro, who hails from Amazon and General Electric, was also promoted to Chief Operating Officer and will continue overseeing Hungryroot’s manufacturing, supply chain, sourcing and customer care functions. Under Vaccaro’s leadership, the company is on track to increase its number of grocery products by 60 percent through the end of 2021 and plans to open a fourth fulfilment center in 2022 to better support demand and continue shipping its personalized grocery deliveries seamlessly nationwide.
“All four of these key executives bring extensive experience and a proven track record of taking fast-growing consumer tech companies to the next level in each of their respective functions,” added McKean. “We’re thrilled to expand our leadership team and leverage their collective expertise to help propel Hungryroot through its next phase of growth.”
Learn more about Hungryroot at: www.hungryroot.com