Retail Operations

Advancing Your Career During a Pandemic

It’s been an interesting time to be an e-learning professional with events going virtual, learning being reimagined and “zoom fatigue” impacting many of us. At the same time, it’s been exciting to see how many people have used their time during the ...

Collaborating Through a Crisis and Beyond

COVID-19 has reminded us more than ever that grocery and supplier collaboration is a vital strand in the social fabric. Beyond the deep-cleaning, shelf-replenishing and physical-distancing tactics that played out at the store level during the ...

How Far is the U.S. from COVID-19 Herd Immunity?

Like many of you, I have been following the march toward COVID-19 herd immunity for months. I’ve also been considering the personal considerations for consumers and the business implications for the food industry. I’ve taken note of how the issue of ...

What’s the Verdict on Plant-Based Fish Alternatives?

Our 2021 Power of Seafood report finds the biggest reason behind an increase in grocery seafood sales is consumers are trying to eat healthier (59%). In fact, 72% of frequent seafood consumers are putting more effort into making healthy and ...

Getting Smarter Together

We believe that we are smarter together than we are solo. We also believe that the racial issues confronting us are too large and complex to be tackled in isolation and that DEI concerns are a non-competitive issue for our industry. We want to ...

FMI and Harold Lloyd: A New Virtual Store Tour Series and More

Recently, many events have moved to virtual platforms and now store tours (at least for now) are moving to the virtual world. An insightful experience that is normally featured at the Midwinter Executive Conference and during in-person share group ...

Who Celebrated the Inaugural Supermarket Employee Day?

Two weeks ago, the food industry held the first-ever Supermarket Employee Day—a celebration designed to recognize employees at every level for the work they do to feed families and enrich lives. Like any good celebration planner, we sent out ...

Did The March Lion Ever Leave?

An English proverb describes typical March weather: If March comes in like a lion, it will go out like a lamb. Since March 2021 marks a year since the COVID-19 pandemic onset, we may feel like that lamb never showed ...

Flexibility, Safety and Fun Will Guide Post-Pandemic Store Design

According to our U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends research, shoppers cited a clean and safe environment as one of the top reasons grocery shoppers choose their primary store. Living through COVID-19 has certainly emphasized the need for safety and ...

Differentiating in Fresh Through Better Forecasting

As a result, retailers need to increasingly focus on how to succeed with fresh across their omnichannel enterprises. They have to make sure fresh remains a differentiator regardless of the selling channel — from in-store to ...

Speaking from the Heart on Valentine’s Day

I am seizing this opportunity to issue this blog as my heartfelt Valentine’s Day card to the food industry, the community I have always admired and respected, but have come to appreciate and dare I say, love, in some new and more profound ways over ...

State of Change in the Meat Industry: What You Need to Know

Even though the average consumer may not think much about how it gets there, a lot of work, thought and resources go into each product in the retail meat case. And behind every piece of protein there are many people who make it happen, from the farm,...

Gen Z Traits That Match Food Industry Needs

Gen Z, including anyone born after 1997, makes up about 23% of the U.S. population and, as a generation, is starting to contribute to the economy by becoming a bigger share of the workforce. To help the food retail industry better understand the ...

Cold Storage is Crucial in Ecommerce Fulfillment

As retailers across the country experiment to find the best strategies to assemble and prepare online orders as quickly and efficiently as possible, cold chain management is emerging as a crucial consideration, especially as it relates to food ...

What’s for Supper During the Super Bowl? Serve up a Supper Bowl Champion Dish

Super Bowl LV pits the Tampa Bay Buccaneers against the Kansas City Chiefs, but the Supper Bowl had the powerhouse Hy-Vee, Inc. competing against the jammin’ J. M. Smucker Company in the championship round....