Voice of Food Retail Blog

Supply Chain Resilience – Lessons from Florida

I recently met with leading supply chain and disaster response experts, decision makers and other stakeholders in Florida to share our experiences in preparing, responding and recovering from Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria in 2017. Hosted by ...

Stir It Up! 2019 Delivers Top Awards for Best in Family Meal Fare and Raises $1.2M for the FMI Foundation

Each year at the FMI Foundation’s signature fundraising event, Stir It Up!, we replicate the culinary adventures that shoppers can experience every day in food retail stores across the nation. The 2019 Stir It Up! competition winners exemplified ...

SQF Code Recognized as a Procurement Standard for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games

The five Olympic rings aren’t the only thing food retailers will notice at 2020 Olympic games in Tokyo, Japan. The SQF Food Safety Code for Primary Production has been recognized as a procurement standard for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic ...

FMI Food Safety 2019 Initiatives

The year ended up being a challenging one with a series of devastating foodborne outbreaks to hit retailers and our communities. As the FMI Food Protection Committee (FPC) looked at initiatives for 2019, public health and preventing additional ...

Stories of Leadership in Food Retail

The food retail industry is fortunate to have a number of formidable leaders, and during times of uncertainty and transition, there’s nothing more comforting than to have courageous and nurturing leaders at the helm....

Smart Retailers Make It Fresh and Make It an Experience

Smart retailers realized there is a new and very good reason for shoppers to visit a physical store - the incredible real-time experience that comes with the foods and beverages they ...

Let Us Begin to Unpack the Romaine Crisis

When the government issued a nationwide consumer advisory on all romaine lettuce just days before the biggest food holiday of the year, the operational impact was massive, and the repercussions continue today. Compounding the situation, this was the ...

Finds from the Fancy Food Show San Francisco 2019

On the first day of the Fancy Food Show, I read the Show Daily lead story pointing me to highlights of global flavors, cuisines and functional ingredients that the article said I'd find throughout the show. Within minutes, while staring on the New-...

Store Managers On The Front Line of Food Retail's Changing Landscape

Director of Talent Development, Kroger Co., Dawn Gilmore shares why store managers are creative and dynamic leaders....

Defense Wins Championships

If there is anything Sunday’s lowest scoring Super Bowl proved it’s that Bear Bryant’s legendary quote, “Offense sells tickets, but defense wins championships,” still stands true in the glitz and glamour of today’s NFL. With that same mentality, FMI ...

A Proactive Approach to On-shelf Availability

We know the On-Shelf Availability (OSA) rate, the measure of products that are not available to buy right now, has been stuck at a stubborn eight percent for some time. If that doesn’t sound like much to you, translate it into dollars. If your ...

Showtime Becomes Real Time in the New Omnichannel World

For more than 20 years, a store’s operations team has worked all day toward that 4 p.m. “showtime” when they present a fully stocked store to their customers. Only now, many of those click-and-collect orders are coming in during morning hours, ...

Be the Food Safety MVP this Super Bowl

This weekend when you are getting your food line-up strait and preparing for the big game, Don’t Wing It! Make sure you have a food safety game plan. ...

Surpassing the Expectations of the New Normal

During these rapidly changing times, the food retail industry is demonstrating the ability to rise to the challenge. Our enhanced ability to adapt, adopt and evolve is preparing us for the next golden era of food retail, doing what we do, smarter ...

Building A Culture of Trust and Transparency in Food Retail

I love to ask participants to fill in the blank to this sentence, “I trust my grocery store to ______.” For a while, I got responses like “sell safe food,” “be clean” and “have a good assortment of food.” But in recent years, I hear more answers ...