Mar 4, 2016

By: Margaret Core, Vice President, Industry Events, Food Marketing Institute
FMI Connect Partner Graphic

You know that your customers look to their grocery stores for one-stop service to supply more and more of their needs and desires. Likewise, FMI Connect, United Fresh, International Floriculture Expo and the Global Cold Chain Expo will do the same for you as they take over McCormick Place’s North and South Halls when their Expos open for two days – Tuesday and Wednesday, June 21 and 22 – simultaneously and adjacent to each other.

Just as your customers expect you to fill all of their food and grocery needs, they expect you to supply them with the healthiest and freshest fruits, vegetables and flowers as well. So why shouldn’t you expect the same from four industry events all dedicated to serving you?

What You’ll See

Within a few short steps of one another, you’ll find the latest innovations in grocery, fresh produce and floral products, processes and technologies. This year during this major co-located event, you’ll get the chance to visit the hundreds of exhibitors prepared to offer you the products and services required to grow your businesses. A sampling of what you’ll find includes:

  • The family-owned ABL company, which has brought from Italy the latest in its fruit processing machinery;
  • The newest flavors Dr. Pepper Snapple has to entice your customers in the coming year;
  • A young company called Love Beets who has resurrected beets as a staple in home kitchens;
  • Rytec High Performance Doors, a company that supplies the right sealed doors for your cold storage spaces;
  • MyWebGrocer, one of many technology companies prepared to help you meet the rapidly changing needs of today’s shoppers;
  • Bow Genie, which can help with the always important task of packaging and marketing fresh flowers; and
  • Perky Jerky, the all-natural jerky product sure to fill out the shelves on the periphery of your store this year.

Who Will Be There

Could thousands of the industry’s top management executives be wrong when they find that working the aisles at these four events on the same day is the best use of their time? Because that’s what happened in 2015, when half of the 13,000 industry representatives who attended the collocated events were either top management or had senior leadership responsibilities at their stores.

Last year, the 10 largest U.S. supermarket chains sent nearly 300 individual attendees to the linked events, 59 of them with titles of vice president or higher and 66 as store leaders. Each of them took a team approach to managing their schedules and fanned out to make sure every category in every Expo was carefully covered.

What It Means to You

Those numbers deliver a direct message: It doesn’t matter if you own a single retail store or have purchasing responsibilities for a national chain, the most efficient use of your time in late June will be to spend two days in the Expos of the industry events most relevant to your needs and most likely to help you build your businesses in 2016 and beyond.

Identifying your customers’ needs and desires and delivering it to them is a never-ending challenge. FMI Connect, United Fresh, International Floriculture Expo and the Global Cold Chain Expo are committed to making sure they do everything they can to help you meet that challenge – and they’re doing it together.