Fresh Foods

We’re All In This Together

Since the early days of the pandemic, FMI staff have been tracking news stories recording the food industry’s responses to their communities. Our tracking is a growing spreadsheet updated daily with nearly 200 rows documenting stories of food, ...

Grocery Heroes: A Half Million Jobs and Counting

We know from our U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends COVID-19 tracker that 25% of Americans are especially worried about having enough money to pay for food. Questions about the emerging job market have resulted in these anxieties and uncertainties ...

Essentially Essential: A First-Hand Account of Value Delivered

In late February, (only two weeks into the job) I was assigned to the Crisis Management Team, a cross-departmental group focused on the looming coronavirus outbreak. It was just a month after I joined the FMI team in the headquarters office that I ...

What Value-Added Really Means for Fresh Categories

We’re living in a new era, but some things still hold true. Grocery stores are open, and shoppers are still seeking ways to put a meal on the table nightly—maybe now more than ever before. There is a rebirth of cooking going on in America and as ...

Partnering Through A Crisis

As the food industry focuses on our critical task of supplying grocery products to shoppers during the COVID-19 outbreak, it’s important to have strong partners to back our efforts. This crisis has created many fast and unexpected changes in how we ...

Partnering Through A Crisis

As the food industry focuses on our critical task of supplying grocery products to shoppers during the COVID-19 outbreak, it’s important to have strong partners to back our efforts. This crisis has created many fast and unexpected changes in how we ...

The Only Constant Is Change

The inevitability of change is especially true when it comes to food production — whether it relates to impactful events ranging from weather extremes to global virus outbreaks or shifting consumer tastes. All of the above have affected the market ...

You Eat with Your Eyes First

Visual appeal may be even more important in this category, in fact, than in other types of foods, fresh or packaged. Like many (most?) shoppers, I’ve been known to take my time picking out an avocado or a bunch of bananas, based on what appeals to ...

The 2020 Strategic Playbook For The Food Industry

FMI and Oliver Wyman’s annual journal publication Boardroom provides a starting point. In fact, volume 5 of the journal is a strategic playbook for the emerging issues a food retailer or supplier should be discussing in their boardrooms—that’s how ...

What Shoppers Say About Produce Packaging

Shoppers are pushing back on plastic waste, but many consumers do recognize packaging can be important when it comes to product shelf life, food safety, in-store conditions, product information, portability and more. This is particularly true for ...

Plant-Based Food Trend Insights

In a highly innovative, yet continuously developing market, comes the need for direction in how to follow changing consumer behaviors and best capture buyer dollars seeking plant-based alternatives. To achieve that goal, FMI produced a three-part ...

A Conversation with Oscar Gonzalez, Northgate Gonzalez Market

Oscar Gonzalez, co-president and COO of Northgate Gonzalez Market, is chairman of FMI's 2020 Midwinter Executive Conference and a true leader when it comes to creating genuine experiences that hold true to his company’s personality. Under Oscar’s ...

What’s In A Brand?

Life is full of circumstances and situations that prompt us to evaluate our personal brand and make necessary changes, adapting to a new position or setting by shifting our brand. Sometimes these involve small adjustments and sometimes we must ...

5 Insights for 2020 Fresh Foods Success

It’s helpful to enter a new year armed with lessons learned in the prior year. This is especially the case for fresh foods, given the wide range of categories and the complexities of the business. In this spirit, I want to raise the profile of a few ...

FMI’s 2019 Year in Review

There is something particularly noble about accomplishments that have so many ups and downs and surprise developments that they require a special brand of perseverance. Finishing the fight requires overcoming the nagging drag of self-doubt when the ...