Why [me]: Andrew's story

What do a Scrabble champion, a former cruise-company employee and the winner of Wheel of Fortune have in common? They’re all a part of Senior Growth Marketing Manager, Andrew Hoing’s story. But how exactly did this former higher-education-staff-turned-marketer end up at MarginEdge (and how did he get so good at Scrabble)?

A native of San Antonio, Texas, Andrew’s restaurant experience may not have been directly in the kitchen, but his upbringing left him all too familiar with the hospitality world. “Growing up, my mom, a culinary school graduate, used to run her own catering and private chef business. She had previously been a lawyer by trade and then, at 40, went to culinary school. She worked on the line in a few kitchens and then started her own business. When she was in culinary school, I got really into cooking by watching Food Network. She would teach me things along the way, and I would watch her with her clients.”

Andrew started his career in higher education, but realized pretty quickly that it wasn’t what he wanted to stick to. “I realized that that's not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. So, I made a transition to marketing. My first full-time marketing job was at a marketing agency.”

From there, he went on to spend the next four years at a restaurant equipment and supply company, holding a wide variety of marketing roles in San Antonio, Texas. “Basically, we had physical store locations all over Texas where people would come in and buy supplies and equipment for their restaurants, from refrigerators and stoves to snow cone machines. I learned a lot about how restaurants operate. Basically, everyone working in the stores was a former restaurant employee or manager, similar to our sales team at MarginEdge. I got to spend a lot of time with them and work with a lot of restaurant operators.” Sounds like a pretty sweet deal (no snow cone machine pun intended).

From there, he was on to his next venture. His wife, Claire, had gotten a new job in Florida, and they were off to the Sunshine State. That meant it was time for Andrew to find new work (and hopefully, somewhere to permanently store a snow cone machine in their house). “I started working for a cruise and travel company that was actually, at the time, a subsidiary of American Express Travel. So it was a travel agency franchising company, and I worked at the corporate office.” Things were breezier than a perfect beach day. And then, COVID happened.

“During COVID, a cruise company was doing about as well as you would think it would be doing, which was not very well. So unfortunately, our company had to start going through layoffs. My immediate job was safe, but it was just going to be a long road ahead. So I started casually looking for other jobs.” This “casual search” would land him at MarginEdge.

“MarginEdge was a perfect mix of my experiences in marketing agencies and marketing to restaurants. It was the only company I applied for at the time. I talked to (now CRO) Tara Clever, who was a one-woman marketing team then. Then I met (Senior Vice President of Business Development) Bob McKay, got hired as our Growth Marketing Manager and the rest is history.”

On an average day, Andrew handles a lot of different tasks. “I oversee all of our initiatives that drive interest in MarginEdge, from all of our paid digital media to things like Facebook and Instagram ads. I also oversee our prospect email marketing campaigns, so any campaign geared at driving new business for us. I do a lot with website landing page building. And recently, I've been involved in product-led growth. That’s how we’re informing our existing customers about all the new products and services that we're rolling out.”

When it comes to his favorite things about his role at [me], “it's just being at MarginEdge in general, and being surrounded by really amazing, talented, thoughtful, smart, kind, empathetic people, that is really cool. It’s also really fun to see our customers and how they use MarginEdge to operate on a day-to-day basis. The restaurant space is incredibly challenging, but at the end of the day, it's all about hospitality, and I love that we apply that same principle to the work we do. I also like the actual buttons I'm pressing and things I get to do. One of my favorite things to do is take seemingly complex challenges and distill them down to their simplest parts. If I had to describe [me] in one word, it would be ‘awesome’.”

In his spare time, Andrew enjoys playing tennis, riding his bike and cooking. “To this day, I still love to experiment with recipes.” Andrew is also a skilled Scrabble player, hosting monthly game nights with his friends (he currently holds this month’s gold medal). And in 2023, he won Wheel of Fortune (and bragging rights). Known in the office not only as our HubSpot whiz but as an integral part of the team, we’re grateful for all of the wonderful and creative things Andrew brings to [me] every single day.