Sustainability

Celebrating Food Industry EPA GreenChill Award Winners

In a typical year, the FMI Energy & Store Development Conference would feature a special presentation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) GreenChill Awards, which celebrates leaders and innovators in the world of refrigerant management. The ...

Checking In With Walmart on Seafood Sustainability

In honor of October, National Seafood Month, we checked in with one of our members that has been making headlines recently on the sustainable seafood front. Considering their global reach, Walmart has been making strides on sustainable seafood ...

Are You Ready for Some Food Ball? The Road to Supper Bowl I

Baseball has its World Series, hockey has the Stanley Cup, tennis has its Wimbledon and football has its Super Bowl. Now the food industry has its Supper Bowl! All of these landmark competitions offer teams the chance to prove they are the best of ...

Four Common Misconceptions About Food Prices

A number of misconceptions regarding grocery prices regularly permeate both the news and our water cooler conversations. These are due to a combination of outdated ideas that should have been put to rest long ago and high profile “examples” that are ...

A Tale of Two Years: A Look at The Food Retail Industry in 2019 and Early 2020

The most recent The Food Retailing Industry Speaks report identifies a striking similarity between ”A Tale of Two Cities” and a tale of two years, 2019 and 2020, for the food industry. Both relay the story of how stark change and challenging times ...

A Fly on The Wall: A Look at The Food Industry’s Performance

FMI is about to release our 71st annual The Food Retailing Industry Speaks report, which tracks operations and strategic initiatives of the food retail industry. This year’s Speaks report reviews performance for 2019, but it also incorporates ...

Prioritizing Fresh Sustainability Despite Pandemic Challenges: FMI FreshForward Recap

It might be logical to think the fresh industry would have put sustainability on the back burner during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in reality, many industry leaders never departed from their sustainability goals in the face of extreme hurdles. ...

Water is Foundational to Our Food System and Economy

Water is not just for safety and cleanliness. Water is foundational to our food system as well as to our world’s economy. According to McKinsey & Company’s recent article water is as important to the world’s economy as oil or data....

Prioritizing Food to People: Packaging, Plastics and Avoiding Food Waste

According to data from ReFED and Feeding America, the number of Americans struggling with hunger since the COVID-19 pandemic has risen from 40 million to a staggering 54 million ...

A Time for Conversations on The Future of Fresh

In the fresh industry, my area of focus at FMI, we need an opportunity not only to listen and learn, but also to converse, collaborate and plan action steps together. The need is great because the pandemic has scrambled so many of the traditional ...

Food Waste During COVID-19

We are both single shopper households, and during the COVID-19 pandemic have been lucky to be able to work from home while experimenting with new ways of food shopping and “cooking.” Right in line with a finding in the U.S. Grocery Trends COVID 19 ...

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 ...

A Smart Way Forward on Sustainability

FMI is a partner in EPA’s SmartWay program. This voluntary public-private program offers technical assistance resources including a comprehensive and well-recognized system for tracking, documenting and sharing information about fuel use and freight ...