Supply Chain

New Year Brings the Same Challenges — But Also New Opportunities

2022 was not supposed to begin this way. When I attended last February’s USDA Agriculture Outlook, the agency predicted that food prices would stabilize and return to a more traditional rate of growth of between one and two percent. Unfortunately, a ...

VIDEO: Food Industry Supply Chain in Focus

FMI Vice President, Industry Relations Doug Baker and Senior Director, Supply Chain & Sustainability Marjorie DePuy discuss some of the supply chain challenges impacting the food industry like port disruptions and labor shortages, their impact on ...

Strength and Resilience in the Food Supply Chain

During a recent White House roundtable on the supply chain, CEOs from FMI member companies Food Lion, Kroger, and Walmart all told President Biden the food supply chain is both resilient and robust to meet the needs of all Americans this December ...

Celebrate What You Want to See More Of

Author Tom Peters, best known for his 1982 book In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies said, “Celebrate what you want to see more of.” These words capture the reason FMI is proclaiming a second annual Supermarket Employee ...

Upending a 30-Year Tradition of a Low-Inflation Industry

Transitory, brief and fleeting are no longer adjectives that can be used to describe the current state of inflation affecting the economy. This news is reflected in recent statements by the Federal Reserve, as authorities indicate inflation will ...

A Wild Industry Ride Still in Progress

Food industry leaders have surely felt a great deal of anxiety about the crazy ride they have been on for the past 18 months, which seems to not have an end in sight. Nevertheless, the entire food retailing industry has shown enormous courage in ...

Celebrating Sustainability and Trucking the Smart Way

FMI is a proud affiliate of the EPA SmartWay program, a collaboration with freight carriers, shippers and logistics providers to accelerate the adoption of advanced fuel-saving technologies and strategies. We wanted to share highlights from a recent ...

Where Can I Get My Booster Vaccine?

While many Americans took advantage of mass vaccination sites around the country to receive their shots (36%), many also received their vaccines at a pharmacy (26%) or doctor’s office (21%). One-in-eight Americans (13%) received their COVID-19 ...

When Will We See The Light At The End Of The Tunnel?

More than half of Americans remain very or extremely concerned about COVID-19, with even more concerned about emerging variants. Despite some easing of overall concern for shopping at the grocery store, shoppers continue to recognize far more ...

Ongoing Conversations About Supply Chain Resilience

With challenges such as demand spikes, supply disruptions, labor shortages and a changing policy landscape, retailers had to adjusted accordingly – not only for the good of the company, but for the community. Here are some of the lessons learned and ...

Retail Stockpiling: Inventory Taxes, Just-in-Time and Beyond

In the grocery industry, inventory stockpiling can be an important hedge, but it can also be a costly one. Apart from production issues and supply chain bottlenecks that make securing large quantities of products more challenging for retailers, one ...

The New Climate of Food Retail

We have all witnessed large scale changes to the design and layout of our favorite grocery stores since the start of COVID-19. Most of the in-store dining experiences were dismantled, and the salad bars turned into grab-and-go stations for pre-made ...

Lessons Learned: How to Strengthen the Supply Chain against Future Crises

FMI sprung at the chance to provide thorough feedback on behalf of the industry. Food retailers and wholesalers have been uniquely positioned during much of the pandemic, particularly as part of what became known as “critical infrastructure....

Charting a Path Forward for the Food Industry

As the food industry takes the important initial steps of learning from, building on, and moving beyond the novel challenges and circumstances COVID-19 has presented, FMI believes it is crucial that trading partners undertake a candid sharing of ...

COVID-19's Influence on the Consumer Packaged Goods Supply Chain

For a deeper understanding of what happened during the peak of the pandemic, how industry players feel about the future, and how we can make supply chains more resilient, FMI partnered with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to conduct a benchmarking ...