Studio Assistant

Studio Assistant – Good Things Vending

East Garfield Park, Chicago Part-time, 28 hours a week $20/hour to start, $21 at three months Six-month initial term with a review. Car required

We turn old snack machines into mural‑painted art vending machines and put them in bars, breweries, museums and cultural spaces around Chicago. Everything inside is $25 or under. Goods are made by local artists, vintage and nostalgia items, novelty and some practical goods. We also sell online, including vintage and collectibles, and that side of the business is growing fast. Very small team.

You’re the set of hands that keeps the studio moving. A sample week of work below.

Monday. Packaging block: bagging, carding, tagging and labeling product so it’s ready for the machines. Web store orders packed and shipped. Inventory counts. The info@ inbox sorted into a clear summary for our Director of Operations. Pickups around the city.

Tuesday. Team meeting in the morning, you take the notes. Build the restock kit for Wednesday’s route. More packaging. Listings.

Wednesday. On site. Listings, orders, packaging.

Friday (Thursday while you’re training). Our new‑item drop goes live and you pack the first wave the day it lands.

Two things carry the most weight. Packaging is five to six hours of a normal week. If it doesn’t happen, the route can’t be kitted and the machines don’t get stocked. VITAL Listings are the other: we’re aiming for 10 to 15 new items a week so there’s always something to drop on Friday.

You’d be good at this if –

You’re careful. A wrong item in a box costs us a customer. – Someone can hand you a task and you’ll run with it without needing it explained twice – You like objects and looking things up. A lot of what we list is vintage and part of the job is figuring out what it is. – You write clearly enough to answer an email and write a product listing without help – Some of this work is repetitive.

Five or six hours of a normal week is packaging product by hand. We need someone who’s still accurate on hour five, not just hour one.

• Car – Available Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday every week, plus a fourth day. These days are not flexible.
• Comfortable in spreadsheets and willing to learn our back‑end systems
• Able to get to East Garfield Park and lift boxes Good first or second job. We’re happy to train the systems.

28 hours a week. Hours are 9:00 to 5:00 on your days. Your first two weeks start at 10:30 while we train you, and your fourth day is Thursday so someone’s here with you. Once you’re running a day on your own, you move to a 9:00 start, open the space yourself, and your fourth day shifts to Friday so you can pack the drop the day it goes live.

$20/hour, moving to $21 at three months once you’re running the job on your own. Six months to start with a review at month five. We expect this to continue and grow, and we’d rather say that honestly than promise something we can’t. Its such a small team that finding the right fit is so important!