Taking Action to Drive Fresh Foods Performance

FMI’s new 2025 FreshForward Action Guide transforms ideas into action with practical steps from industry leaders to tackle labor challenges, advance health and well-being and capture meal occasions to drive real progress across the fresh food sector.

By: Rick Stein, Vice President, Fresh Foods, FMI

"It's not about ideas. It's about making ideas happen."

I like this this quote from the business-focused author and entrepreneur Scott Belsky because it emphasizes that while ideas are the starting point, true success comes when you turn them into action.

Belsky also wrote, "An idea can only become a reality once it is broken down into organized, actionable elements." 

This type of action-oriented approach is at the heart of FMI’s newly released "2025 Action Guide: Key Steps to Move the Fresh Industry Forward." The guide spotlights action steps identified by attendee breakout groups at FMI’s Fresh Forward conference in August in San Diego. The steps provide a robust roadmap for the fresh industry to overcome challenges and make progress on its biggest opportunities.

This year’s conference showcased three crucial topics in fresh: labor challenges, health and well-being and meal occasions. Attendees — including retailers and suppliers — heard insights from expert panels on each topic and then weighed in with suggested action steps.

I want to briefly relay some of these steps published in the guide, and why they matter.

Overcoming Labor Challenges

Fresh industry leaders can choose from a wide range of actions to help address labor hurdles and opportunities. These include boosting fresh industry attractiveness to support recruiting, mapping career paths, engaging further with Gen Z, prioritizing partner collaboration and aligning humans with technology.

Here is a breakdown of steps offered by attendees to help align humans with technology: “Find the sweet spot between investments in people and automation. Identify how AI can take over mundane tasks so employees can build their skill sets to drive customer engagement and roles they are passionate about.”

Supporting Health and Well-Being

Fresh leaders should consider action steps to further address shoppers’ needs related to health and well-being. These can include showcasing the health attributes of fresh foods, supporting the nutrition needs of consumers taking GLP-1 medications, leveraging technology to help support personalized needs and encouraging trading partner collaboration to drive health messaging and initiatives.

I especially like the action called “connect the dots.” Here’s how this is described in the guide: “Teams across departments such as merchandising, marketing, and nutrition are not always in sync with each other on health and well-being initiatives and messaging. Establish cross-functional efforts to plan, launch, and review health-related programs to connect the dots across the store — from food to pharmacy.”

Capturing Meal Occasions

The fresh industry can take strategic approaches to improve performance on meal solutions strategies. FreshForward attendees suggested actions that include relaying the value proposition of meals at grocery retail, improving meals merchandising both in-store and online, providing digital ordering tools for shoppers and spotlighting recipes.

Here’s what attendees said about spotlighting recipes, as relayed in the Action Guide: “Tap into the power of recipes to boost shopper meals engagement. Leverage recipes from videos, websites, social media, and other sources to relay ideas and enhance customer experiences.”

Taking the First Step

I encourage you to download the Action Guide. It incorporates many more action steps and insights from the conference — including from FMI’s latest research on The State of Fresh Foods 2025. It also provides a checklist to help ensure overall progress.

FreshForward, a product of our collaboration with Deloitte, is about how the fresh sector comes together to push the industry forward.

Read the Action Guide