Three Crucial Strategies to Advance Fresh Foods

The FMI FreshForward Conference tackles the future of fresh at retail and focuses on opportunities to connect with the consumer, enhance fresh marketing and embrace practical technology.

By Rick Stein, Vice President, Fresh Foods, FMI 

Fresh foods is central to the success of grocery retail.

This point is increasingly underscored by industry leaders and FMI research.

Now is the time to focus on overcoming key challenges and building on the fresh momentum. Fresh industry leaders are eyeing unique opportunities to make progress, and three of the biggest ones will be spotlighted at this year’s FMI FreshForward Conference, set for August 10 to 12 in St. Louis, Missouri.

Let me briefly relay the three opportunities and why they are essential to ongoing success.

1. Connecting with the Consumer

The food industry is striving to connect with changing consumers. Too often, fresh lags center store in branding efforts and is challenged in relaying its stories to shoppers due to limited product packaging. As a result, fresh may get less credit with shoppers for its ability to foster health and well-being, sustainability and many other benefits. The industry needs to explore answers to important questions. How can the fresh industry build stronger consumer connections and loyalty for its brands and products? How can fresh leaders identify the best strategies to inform shoppers and support customer decision-making?

2. Enhancing Fresh Merchandising

Food retailers need to keep enhancing in-store merchandising to optimize success. Innovative approaches will enable retailers to reinvent stores and boost shopper experiences. Success will require overcoming the current limitations of store footprints, layouts, traffic patterns, aisles and fixtures. It will also involve reconsidering omnichannel merchandising strategies to ensure in-store and online work well together. What does success look like? What operational hurdles need to be overcome? What are examples of today’s most effective fresh merchandising strategies across markets and countries?

3. Embracing Practical Technology

The capabilities of technology, including AI, are accelerating at a faster pace. Fresh retailers and suppliers are eager to identify practical and proven tech solutions for a range of applications. The focus on "practical" supports the need to achieve relatively quick ROI to ace today’s biggest fresh opportunities and drive success with customers, employees and operations. What are examples of fresh-focused technology applications — whether for inventory, freshness, forecasting or other aspects —that are delivering substantial ROI? How can leaders learn from the success of others to evaluate strategies for their own operations?

Winning with Actionable Strategies

At FreshForward, developed with Deloitte, FMI tackles the future of fresh at retail and focuses on generating actionable next steps. The conference is FMI’s annual gathering of senior-level retailers and suppliers in the fresh sector. It features educational presentations, collaborative breakout groups for attendees to identify action steps, and many opportunities for networking. A FreshForward Action Guide is published after the conference, so attendees have recommendations on how to make progress on key challenges.

I hope you'll take the opportunity to register now for FreshForward. We hope to see you there as we address some of the biggest hurdles and collaborate on the solutions.

Register Now