Corporate Social Responsibility

Food Retailer or Food Storyteller?

It has been well substantiated that shoppers today ask more questions about their food than ever before. They want to know its story and are in search of intersections – those places where the details of their food’s story resonate with some aspect ...

The SCOTUS Case that will Reexamine What “Confidential” Means to You

A legal case heading to oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court this spring has far-reaching implications when it comes to something you hold near and dear -- your confidential commercial information. FMI is a named party in the case because we ...

Avoiding the Regret of Hindsight; Embracing the Gene Editing Story Now

The lesson in avoiding regret starts with the bleak reminder of how often we receive nuggets of information that we should act on but because we’re busy or distracted or inundated we fail or choose not to do anything about them. The motivational ...

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....

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 ...

The Boardroom’s Perspective of The Future of Retail

For the fourth year, FMI and Oliver Wyman have teamed up to provide thought leadership on the most pressing issues facing the food retail industry. The annual edition of Boardroom takes readers directly into the C-Suite of food retail companies and ...

Unifying the Food Retail Industry in 2018

The FMI Foundation worked to unite the food retail industry using three main campaigns: National Family Meals Month™, Unified Voice Protocol and Stir It ...

FMI’s 2018 Financial Diversity

Providing the retail food industry with the myriad products and services that FMI offers requires resources—both human and financial capital. To avoid being a one-pronged fork, any well-run business endeavors to diversify its revenue sources and FMI ...

Why Millennials Are Tired of Being Categorized and Classified

Without a doubt, we are knee deep in the age of radical personalization, with consumers anticipating food retailers’ ability to know and serve each customer’s shopping preferences regarding cost, convenience, taste, experience, health and wellness, ...

Where Does Sustainability Live?

At a conference in June, a young man spotted “FMI” on my nametag and struck up a conversation. “I’m interested in the food industry and want to be part of it, but I don’t understand where sustainability lives.” I was a little taken aback at this and ...

Consumer Insights Fuel FMI’s 2018 Narrative

FMI’s brand story was particularly prolific this year and our influence extended far beyond the Nation’s Capital. As one area of measurement, we reached a historic high for media mentions, effectively driving our own narrative on the issues that ...

FMI’s Strategic X’s and O’s in 2018

What is true for the industry is reflected in the life of its trade association. 2018 has been a year of the need for FMI to pay attention to where we plot our X’s while carefully watching out for those sneaky O’...

The Transparency Imperative: The Foundation of Trust and Loyalty

“Transparency is an imperative for growing consumer trust and loyalty.” These wise words are offered by FMI’s Doug Baker, vice president, industry relations in assessing The Transparency Imperative research study released in September by FMI, with ...

Community Outreach Awards: Making A Difference in Communities

It’s that time of year again when we like to recognize food retailers as the driving force behind these community and charitable events. Food retailers submit their best practice examples of programs designed to educate and mentor youth; impact the ...

Moving from Worry to What Works

As a good-news oriented, lets-find-the-opportunity–here kind of person, it troubles me that the piece of FMI research posed for annually providing a snapshot of the state of the food retail industry tends to focus on concerns and ...