Agenda

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 Growing, innovating and changing is no longer an option in today’s fast-paced world, it’s a requirement. The question is, how do you create a culture that’s geared to innovate in the face of overwhelming new technologies, continued pandemic challenges and even the hectic day-to-day operations? In this session, we’ll unpack how to shift your culture to innovation regardless of what’s standing in your way. How to innovation #NoMatterWhat. 

Our industry is long past due for a fundamental shift in local marketing funding and strategy. For nearly a century, retailers and CPG companies have been investing in static advertising systems. As we shift from print to digital, it’s imperative that we build intelligent, dynamic ecosystems that target qualified consumers, drive traffic, and measure results.

Discover the platform that’s changing the face of local retail marketing. Learn how to build a digital marketplace of the future, untethered from past constraints, and focused on benefit for the retailer, CPG, and customer.

As instant grocery delivery players like Instacart, DoorDash and GoPuff make stratospheric leaps in the business of “convenience” shopping, the conversation is turning to automation and what role it can play in their businesses.  Join us as we look at two sides of the “convenience” conversation – first from the new “Q” Market perspective and then from the grocer’s perspective. We will examine this growing trend of on-demand grocery shopping and the new operational models that fuel them. Each side has lofty goals for profit, and we will investigate the benefits and challenges of both store-level and regional automation for replenishment and order fulfillment.

A single shopper is looking for a lot from today’s grocery stores and brands. Some shopping journeys need to be as convenient as possible. Other trips require discovery, guidance, and demonstration; they function as a complete sensory and brand experience. Delivering all of this in-store and through an integrated, digital marketplace is complex, and costly.

 Accenture’s Store of Tomorrow shows what happens when physical walls mesh with digital convenience. Explore how a single store can serve many shopping journeys, profitably. Experience streamlined shopping and see what happens when a fulfillment center shares a roof with an experiential boutique. Watch as the shopping aisle becomes completely redefined, digital and dynamic. See how the shoppers engage with CPG brands differently.

Virtual Pitch Winners present bite-size presentations addressing core central themes such as digital/e-commerce, automation, customer engagement, and optimization from unique vantage points.

Featured Companies:

• Defendry
  The pressing needs of retail security have evolved. Organized retail crime has transformed, looting linked with civil unrest has increased and active shooter incidents in the grocery store are no longer unheard of. What can retailers do to protect their profits, customers, and employees from these threats? Learn of one technological solution that can help mitigate these threats to security and asset protection from Defendry. This system utilizes automation to monitor security systems for threat behaviors and provides seamless communication notification options to aid employees and police. Founder, Pat Sullivan will share how the Defendry technology system can support retailers in meeting the demands our industry’s evolved security needs.
  
• Evigence Sensors
  The numbers don’t lie—food waste is an ever-growing obstacle for our industry. Join Evigence Sensors as they tackle the issue of food waste and introduce our audience to new way to view, measure and show consumers freshness of products at item level, optimizing the shelf life of products and reducing food waste. This technology can help retailers and CPGs reach sustainability goals while making financial gains on the bottom line.
• flexEngage
  Due to a changing retail landscape post-pandemic, retailers have worked tirelessly to overcome an increase in consumers’ concerns around physical contact inside and outside the store environment. Contactless – or touch-free – shopping and transacting have become highly important as retailers seek to assure their customers of a safe shopping and delivery experience. However, this raises many important questions around how we continue to drive personalized experiences from afar and the future of the in-store experience.
  
  Join us as we discuss identifying all touch-points across the shopping journey, insights to the types of solutions providing contactless capabilities, and how retail technology innovation is being influenced post-pandemic.

Enjoy some fun in the sun while you catch up with everyone at our 2nd Annual Meat 'n Catchup Picnic. 

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Enhance your technology strategy through collaboration, knowledge exchange, and dialogue with technology partners primed to help you meet your goals. 

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The perfect place for first-timers to take a moment to unwind ahead of a productive three days. We'll be onsite to answer questions and provide tips on making your FMI Midwinter the most effective.

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Today’s planograms are set to national or divisional averages on a quarterly or annual basis, without accounting for differences in store-level demand. Without the ability to adapt to recent supply chain shocks and consumer demand changes in every category, retailers are losing billions in lost sales due to under- and over-ordering. Discover how AI-driven technologies can help improve your planogram strategy and positively impact your bottom line. 

Windemere X

Computer vision is a form of artificial intelligence in which computers gain a high-level understanding from digital images or videos, seeking to automate tasks the human visual system can do. In other words, they can "see." Learn about the explosive growth of computer vision, as retailers begin to scale this disruptive technology.

Virtual Pitch Winners present bite-size presentations addressing core central themes such as digital/e-commerce, automation, customer engagement, and optimization from unique vantage points.

Featured Companies:

• Greenfence 
  The session takes a dive into Blockchain efficiencies which have changed the end-to-end rewards business, enabling brands and retailers to create and distribute evolutionary NFTs rewards in minutes, at a fraction of the cost, with greater efficacy, and without costly middlemen. As NFT and blockchain pioneers, GFTx has executed the first major Hollywood Studio NFT programs with Fox, Marvel and Sony, the only company to transform paper and digital coupons to NFT’s in partnership with major POS, retailer and mobile companies (Toshiba, Kroger and T-Mobile), the first to launch brand partnership with cryptocurrency wallets and NFT’s (Heineken), and the first to execute an NFT program with T-Mobile and Kroger generating over 600K NFT wallets in 24 hours.
• Tally Retail Solutions
  Learn how technology can transform inventory control for food retail. Tally Retail Solutions will explain how their technology has helped many leading retailers and CPG's keep track of on shelf availability, alert store personnel and DSD providers to low or out of stocks.  The solution has also dramatically deterred customer theft and Organized Retail Crime in vulnerable stores. Capable of tactical deployment in any merchandise category, this ideal tool can affordably target chronically out of stock or high loss areas.
• Untie Nots
  Untie Nots shares how their proven SaaS solution, LOYALTY CHALLENGE, introduces gamification and personalization to mass promotions resulting in (i) increased digital customer acquisition and engagement, (ii) greater customer share-of-wallet and boost to same-store-sales growth, and (iii) higher ROI for grocery retailers (7:1+) and supplier partners (4:1+). You’re invited to hear how Carrefour, Leclerc, Auchan, and many other grocery retail clients, along with their supplier partners, are rapidly bringing new and exciting digital customer experiences and wallet-stretching opportunities to shoppers.

Automated online order fulfillment is a hot space as retailers look to gain efficiency on the path to eCommerce profitability. The challenges related to automating fulfillment grow quickly when having to fulfill frozen and chilled products. Learn about a new technology that harnesses the thermoelectric power of phonons to revolutionize refrigeration.

Business process automation is poised to transform many retail operations, especially marketing. Gain an understanding of how BPA works and what it takes to power up this capability. This session will offer an inside view of what automating sophisticated marketing personalization looks like along with a review of the benefits.

accelerate 360

The retail industry creates value has entered a new dimension and the rules of competition have changed. Learn about how new industry entrants are changing the rules of value creation and how traditional retailers can leverage their massive customer bases to create new value.

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Enjoy a light lunch as thought leaders share bite-size perspectives on current and future issues impacting the food retail industry. Detailed content and speaker information to follow. 

Over the last 24 months, everything we thought we knew about the consumer, employees, and the supply chain has gone by the wayside.  The COVID pandemic has introduced significant structural changes in how employees see work and showcased labor's importance in virtually every aspect of the consumer value chain.  To build a new level of surety of supply, retailers and CPGs will have to significantly up their game in how they treat their employees and invest in the latest automation technologies. Get an insider’s view of these trends and how you can leverage them to drive transformational change in your organization.

Enjoy a light lunch as thought leaders share bite-size perspectives on current and future issues impacting the food retail industry. 

Discover key topics being discussed in food retail boardrooms across the country as it rebounds from the pandemic, including competitive and investment challenges and their financial and strategic implications. 

Enhance your technology strategy through collaboration, knowledge exchange, and dialogue with technology partners primed to help you meet your goals. 

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1. Perceptions of price and value,
2. Meal sourcing, 
3. Environmental, social and governance concerns (sustainability),  
4. COVID-19 pandemic.

Stop by the Regency Lounge to sample a variety of Bud Light Seltzers and network with other attendees.  

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In this presentation, Boxed, Inc. CEO Chieh Huang will discuss the lessons we all learned during the two years of the Covid-19 pandemic through the lens of his own company. He’ll explore the many ways in which the food retail business and consumer buying patterns have changed forever and how he’s thinking about the future.

One of the most challenging aspects of maintaining a healthy supply chain, even prior to the pandemic, was the ability to attract and retain talent. In 2020, 85% of retailers leveraged higher wages/salaries as one method to resolve recruitment and retention challenges but they still felt the burden of a lack of human capital. What is driving people away from the food industry and for those who choose to stay, what is keeping them? Hear the voices of current and former food industry employees on why they’ve stayed or left and what their employers have done to make the difference. Direct feedback from employees gathered through video interviews by the FMI Research team will be narrated and analyzed by Deloitte industry expert Barb Renner.

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Federal Trade Commissioner Noah Phillips joins FMI CEO and President Leslie Sarasin for an onstage discussion of competition in the marketplace, regulation and the role of the FTC in overseeing the current marketplace. As the FTC’s priorities continue to evolve in the Biden Administration, we’ll explore how those priorities may impact your business and the broader food industry.

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During our morning yoga, we'll flow from pose to pose linking movement and breath. Expect sun salutations to heat the body up slowly and moon salutations to cool down gently. In addition, there will be a variety of poses to awaken our full range of motion slowly and mindfully, setting us up for a successful day at Midwinter.

All levels welcome!

Have any of your recent conversations failed to include questions about the supply chain, labor issues, food prices, inflation, or the economy?  In the context of FMI’s Annual Meeting, Chairman of the FMI Board Randy Edeker will guide us in a review of 2021, placing these top-of-mind concerns and other issues into context, sharing what FMI has done and is doing to shift these questions into answers, these challenges into opportunities, and these problems into solutions. Join this exploration of the ways FMI is changing the way we talk about the food industry in the halls of Congress, in the aisles of the supermarket, and around the family dinner table.

 It has been observed that the present is nothing but the instant when the past collides with the future and for it to be productive, you must both know where you’ve been and where you want to go. As the food industry sorts through the tumultuous challenges and changes we’ve experienced in the past 20 months, the past has much to teach us in framing a future that plays to our strengths, fits our resolve, and helps us realize our essential role.

As the new year began with yet another surge in the worldwide pandemic and uncertainty at so many turns, some are jokingly calling this not 2022 but 2020-Too. But the fundamentals today are quite different than two years ago. Chief Economist & Center Leader of Economy, Strategy & Finance at The Conference Board, Dana M. Peterson, will walk us through the economic trends to watch in her signature style.

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Enhance your technology strategy through collaboration, knowledge exchange, and dialogue with technology partners primed to help you meet your goals. 

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Tee off with your colleagues on the 18-hole championship course, a Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary, that tests the abilities of every skill level.

Questions? Contact Jennifer Hatcher at jhatcher@fmi.org

RSVP by invitation only

Visit the Regency Lounge to create your own ice cream sundae featuring unique toppings provided by The Hershey Company.

Join your friends and colleagues in a multi- sensory celebration of FMI’s 45 years of serving the food industry.  We’ll taste tantalizing fare, chat with some of the finest people on earth, and tap our toes to the soundtrack of the last half century.  Our respective worlds may be spinning faster than ever before but don’t miss this chance to catch-up with old friends, recalibrate your taste buds, and enjoy the tunes attached to some of your fondest recollections.  Brought to you by the generous sponsors of the FMI Foundation, FMI 45 RPM will help you relax, recharge, and reconnect.