Spread the Word
Monday, October 1, 2012 - 7:00 AM
Grab breakfast and sit down with your industry peers for several of these unique, collaborative Share Group discussions moderated by industry veterans. The Share Group Discussions consist of two, back-to-back sessions that are each 45-minutes in length. Bring your insights, experience and questions.
Simplifying consumer’s lives is one of the top trends with today’s economy and on-the-go lifestyle. Consumers are uber-interested in healthy, innovative products and services that make their daily routine less complex and stressful. Our food lives are filled with opportunities to apply organization strategy to achieve a more healthful approach to planning and preparing great food. But presenting solutions is easy compared to changing behaviors and habits.
Many simplified food solutions have been promoted and some have been adopted, but let’s talk about what hasn’t been thought of or attempted that could deliver a ”WOW!” for consumers. Let’s explore ideas that will change shopper behavior and positively impact their food lives.
Bring your curiosity and ideas to share with Janet; she will plan to share her experience and ideas to facilitate an inspiring and actionable conversation.
Speaker: Janet Myers, Sr. Director Retail Culinary Experience Kraft Foods
Janet Myers is currently Sr. Director, Customer Culinary Experience for Kraft Foods - Glenview, IL. This role presents Kraft Kitchens to the retail grocery customer providing insight on food trend tracking and analysis, consumer food insight identification, food and nutrition communications and food idea development to support partnered shopper marketing programs. Her role is a collaborative partnership in presenting the selling story through culinary expertise to the retail grocery buying community.
Previous to this role, she led the North American Kraft Kitchens team who provides all of the culinary support for Kraft’s retail portfolio including food-related content for various consumer marketing channels, such as Food & Family, a custom-published magazine and kraftfoods.com. Janet’s career has spanned across culinary assignments in three of Kraft‘s North American locations where she has held various positions in food idea marketing, new product development and consumer affairs. Significant contributions include developing on the very first culinary concepts of Oscar Mayer LUNCHABLES, repositioning the JELL-O, BAKER’S Chocolate and COOL WHIP businesses through strong recipe usage strategy and finally, what Janet describes as career and food marketing transformation…her culinary leadership and entrepreneurial teamwork in developing and launching the first U.S. CPG food website in 1996.
She graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a B.S. in Home Economics in Business, a minor in Journalism and core study in Food Science. Over the course of Janet’s career, her contributions have been recognized with Kraft’s President’s Club, Technical Research Innovation and Superior Achievement Awards.
Janet is passionate about the subject of food and uses it as one of her top criteria for hiring culinary professionals in the Kraft Kitchens. It is a very exciting time to be working in a culinary role for a leading global food manufacturer…advances in technology and service are driving fast-paced change in the consumer’s engagement with food. It challenges us to push the envelope in creatively delivering a delicious food experience to consumers in new ways!
Janet enjoys culinary history and entertaining friends and family with her husband, Patrick, (who competes with her regularly in the kitchen!).
The perimeter gets all of the attention today because it is where retailers feel they can differentiate versus competition and build shopper loyalty. The center store still remains the economic engine, but, as new, different, and increasingly value-oriented and non-traditional channels/competitors sell food, the challenges to center-store departments and categories will only increase. The objective of this round table is to discuss and identify ways to reverse the decline in center store sales and stave off the eroding effects the focus on perimeter has caused. Those who join and participate in our discussion will walk away with ideas on how to reverse this sales trend and differentiate center store today.
Speaker: Craig Rosenblum, Partner, Willard Bishop
In addition to his role as Partner, Craig leads business development efforts for the company. His expertise encompasses technology, strategy, and tactics development in both supply and demand, and includes key industry initiatives in the areas of Category Management, CPFR, ECR, Activity-Based Costing, and Data Synchronization. He has been instrumental in driving collaboration for companies such as: Ahold, CVS, SuperValu, PepsiCo and Masterfoods.
Prior to joining Willard Bishop, Craig led business development efforts for Prescient Applied Intelligence, Milton Merl Associates, and Crossmark. He has presented at many leading industry events (GMA, FMI, CGIT) and has been published in Progressive Grocer, Supermarket News, GMA Forum and the Wall Street Journal.
His B.S. degree in Packaging Science and Technology is from Rochester Institute of Technology.
Sustainability has been part of the retail landscape for more than a decade driving environmental benefits and cost savings as stores find ways to cut energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions. But just as the last recycling bin is set up and the newest efficient light bulbs are installed, everything is changing.
Along with preferring fresher foods and global flavors, today’s shoppers — especially those in Generation X and the Millennials —look at environment, health and wellness, and ethical concerns as a single concept. Recycling and saving energy now sit alongside animal welfare and fair treatment of workers.
Today’s shoppers also are making more informed decisions than ever by using smart phones for almost a third of purchasing decisions. And they’re relying on advice from the thousands of start ups and interest groups serving up “food finder” apps along with millions of other “crowdsourced” advisors, other shoppers who are contributing their own opinions, ratings and best guesses about your business practices and your suppliers’ practices as well.
At the same time, today’s shoppers are paying more than ever for companies to make choices for them, cut through the chatter, and do the research.
So what does it mean to be a leader in sustainability in the retail sector? How can retailers create more value for their customers, and build trust? And how do companies engage these issues in a marketplace where customers are talking with each other more than ever?
Speaker: Arlin Wasserman, Partner Changing Tastes
Arlin Wasserman is the founder and principal of Changing Tastes. Since 2003, Changing Tastes has worked with food and agriculture companies, venture and philanthropic investors realize new opportunities at the intersection of sustainability, public health, flavor and demographic trends. Arlin also chairs the Sustainability Business Leadership Council at The Culinary Institute of America, and serves on the board of the Sustainable Food Lab and is a fellow at the Aspen Institute.
Arlin also has served as an advisor on sustainability, marketing, strategy and innovation issues to a diverse client base ranging from General Mills and the Organic Trade Association to the Future of Fish sustainable seafood innovation platform, many of the nation’s largest private foundations, and the United States Department of Agriculture and the European Union Parliament.
Nearly two decades ago, Arlin began developing some of the nation’s first consumer marketing campaigns around local food systems and brand building around terroir: the place where food is grown, before being awarded a national Food and Society Policy Fellowship by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.
From 2007 to early 2012 Arlin served as Vice President of Sustainability at Sodexo, the world's leading institutional food service provider, developing and implementing the company’s first sustainability strategy. Arlin holds a Master of Science in Natural Resources and a Masters of Public Health, as well as a Bachelor of Arts in Political Economics, all from the University of Michigan. (Gaithersburg, MD)
Participating in the WIC program in California has become increasingly more difficult in the past several years. Program oversight has in many ways become a game of ”gotcha” with enforcement action based on undisclosed technical errors. At the same time, bad actors have flocked to the program in droves with little or no consequence. The result? Program costs have increased in California while declining in other states leading the USDA to step in and take draconian measures that effectively cut off access to the program for California vendors and in many cases recipients themselves.
Over the course of 2011 and 2012 CGA has taken significant steps to address both the oversight miscues on the part of State and Federal regulators, and key systemic issues that make participation in the program difficult for grocers. Join us to discuss recent regulatory changes that impact vendor operations and legislation that could help your company comply with the program requirements.
Speaker: Keri Askew Bailey, VP Government Relations, California Grocers Association
Keri Askew Bailey has led CGA’s Government Relations Department since 2009. She previously lobbied in both California and Nevada for three years for the California and Nevada Credit Union Leagues. Prior to beginning her career as an advocate, Askew Bailey spent thirteen years working in the California State Assembly as a policy analyst for a variety of lawmakers. Her tenure “in the Building” included stints for both Northern California and Southern California lawmakers, completing her last five years of public service as a Chief of Staff.
Fact: The next generation of consumers will be more accustomed to digital communications than any that has come before.
Fact: E-commerce means that there could be new competition coming from any and all directions.
Fact: The Internet is altering the rules of retailing and marketing, creating an environment that demands transparency, provides a constant forum for consumer input and output, and shifts the balance of power to shoppers.
Fact: Mobile payment systems are revolutionizing the way people pay for their acquisitions.
Fact: Amazon has changed the retailing game. Forever.
These are just some of the basic facts that are reshaping the new e-conomy. Meet with your peers and participate in a lively discussion that will focus on what is happening in the digital realm and its effects on retailers, suppliers and shoppers.
Speaker: Kevin Coupe, "Content Guy," MorningNewsBeat.com & Co-Author, "THE BIG PICTURE: Essential Business Lessons From The Movies"
He is the co-author, with Michael Sansolo, of "THE BIG PICTURE: Essential Business Lessons From The Movies," which uses movies ranging from "The Godfather" to "Young Frankenstein" to illustrate tenets of leadership, the importance of marketing and branding, and how to survive in the workplace. Coupe and Sansolo currently are outlining yet another business book, and Coupe also is laboring on a novel and a screenplay (which he describes as being a "black comedy about forward buying, just-in-time deliveries and slotting allowances").
For the past decade, he's had his own website/blog – www.MorningNewsBeat.com – providing what he calls "business news in context, and analysis with attitude" to more than 22,000 subscribers all over the world. An independent survey recently ranked MNB as the "top industry news and information site."
In addition to speaking at hundreds of conferences in the U.S. and abroad and reporting from 45 states and six continents, Kevin has worked as a daily newspaper reporter, magazine writer and editor, video producer, bodyguard, and clothing salesman. He has supervised a winery tasting room (happily), run two marathons (slowly), drove a race car (badly), taken boxing lessons (painfully) and acted in a major (and obscure) motion picture.
He is married with three children, and lives in Connecticut.