49th Parallel Roasters
Business Analyst Co-op Student
Period
Apr. 2026 - Sept. 2026
About the Role
49th Parallel Coffee Roasters is one of Canada's leading specialty coffee companies, operating five cafés across Canada while serving wholesale, retail, and e-commerce customers across North America. As a Business Analyst Co-op within the Finance team, I supported both day-to-day finance operations and strategic business initiatives. My role combined financial operations, data analytics, and process improvement, allowing me to work closely with Finance, Operations, Sales, and Plant Management to transform business data into actionable insights that supported operational decision-making. Alongside my analytics projects, I was responsible for accounts payable invoice processing, month-end reconciliation, payroll entries, and ERP data management, giving me a strong understanding of both business processes and financial operations.
Project 1 - Driver vs. Third-Party Delivery Cost Analysis
Situation
Task
Action
Results
Following the departure of the company's delivery driver, deliveries were outsourced to third-party carriers. Management needed data to determine whether continuing with outsourced logistics or hiring a new in-house driver would be more cost-effective.
Develop a decision-support tool that compared long-term delivery costs under different business scenarios and identified the break-even point for hiring an in-house driver.
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Gathered historical delivery cost data from multiple shipping providers.
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Built an interactive cost simulation tool with adjustable assumptions.
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Modeled different business growth scenarios and break-even analyses.
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Presented findings directly to the Plant Manager and demonstrated how changing assumptions affected operational costs.
Developed a forecasting application currently under review by the operations team, providing a scalable approach for improving production planning and inventory management as the business continues to expand.
Project 2 - Commercial Invoice Automation
Situation
Task
Action
Results
New U.S. customs requirements significantly increased the amount of manual work required to prepare commercial invoices for cross-border shipments. Staff had to manually verify product descriptions and HS codes for every shipment.
Reduce manual processing time while maintaining customs compliance.
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Analyzed the existing commercial invoice workflow.
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Designed an Excel automation template using lookup tables.
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Integrated ERP exports with automated HS code mapping.
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Eliminated repetitive manual entry for shipment documentation.
Created a standardized workflow that substantially reduced manual effort and improved consistency in commercial invoice preparation. The solution is currently undergoing validation with FedEx for operational implementation.
Project 3 - Dues & Subscription Cost Optimization Dashboard
Situation
Task
Action
Results
The company had multiple recurring subscriptions without centralized visibility into renewal schedules or ongoing costs.
Build a centralized tracking system while identifying opportunities to reduce recurring expenses.
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Audited company-wide subscription records.
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Cross-referenced Accounts Payable transactions.
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Built a dashboard to monitor recurring costs.
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Flagged redundant and underutilized subscriptions.
Discovered multiple unnecessary subscription expenses, including dozens of unused domain registrations that continued generating recurring hosting costs, providing clear cost-saving opportunities.
Project 4 - Café Sales Analytics Dashboard (Power BI)
Situation
Task
Action
Sales performance varied significantly across the company's five café locations, but management lacked visibility into the drivers behind those differences.
Analyze transaction-level sales data to identify trends and provide actionable recommendations.
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Cleaned and transformed one year of POS transaction data.
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Built an interactive Power BI dashboard.
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Conducted product mix and seasonal sales analyses.
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Presented findings to management to support merchandising decisions.
Results
The analysis identified seasonal sales trends, significant differences in savoury product performance between locations, and declining sales patterns for selected products, providing management with evidence-based insights for future merchandising strategies.
Project 5 - S&OP Sales Forecasting Tool
Situation
Task
Action
Rapid business growth resulted in more than 500 new specialty retail customers in a single month, making the existing manual forecasting process insufficient for production planning.
Develop a more scalable forecasting process to support Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP).
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Collaborated with Finance and Operations.
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Applied ARIMA time-series forecasting.
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Built a Streamlit application that automatically updates weekly forecasts.
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Proposed a workflow supporting company-wide S&OP initiatives.
Results
Developed a forecasting application currently under review by the operations team, providing a scalable approach for improving production planning and inventory management as the business continues to expand.