New York Produce Show Educational Sessions Highlight Industry Insights

Three educational sessions were spotlighted on a corner stage on the Javits Center trade show floor during the New York Produce Show, Dec. 11. Each topic featured a panel of industry leaders, who shared their insights.

RETAIL TRENDS

Former retailer, consultant, and industry leader Paul Kneeland led a panel with three retail colleagues to discuss What’s Hot, What’s Not: Retail Trends and Opportunities.

Food prices that are 20 to 25% higher without increases in customers’ salaries are making lower margins at retail a new normal, according to Maria Wieloch, head of category management and business development at Sweden’s ICA Gruppen, with 1,300 stores in four formats.

“Shoppers also want a good price, plus sustainability, such as lower-cost organics,” Wieloch adds.

CEA agriculture is becoming a more important supply source for Federated Co-Operatives, Ltd., in Saskatoon, Canada, which supplies over 160 co-ops across Western Canada.

“We typically source from California, but climate change weather issues make this more unpredictable. I’m seeing a lot more CEA greenhouses in Western Canada. Benefits are local, sustainability, and cost stability,” says Lindsay Young, produce category development manager.

Greater demand for packaged produce, juices, and fresh-cut fruit are top trends for Marc Goldman, produce director at Morton Williams Supermarkets, a 17-store chain headquartered in Bronx, NY. Other than that, Goldman says, “the new normal is that nothing is normal anymore.”

FOOD SAFFETY

The consensus of panelists at the Food Safety: Critical Insight, Updates on FSMA 204, was the produce industry should be preparing for full compliance a year from now.

Panelists included Alan Siger, president of the Produce Distributors Association; Jennifer McEntire, founder, Food Safety Strategy; Nora Olson, food safety and quality assurance manager, John Vena, Inc.; and Manuel Padilla Chevez, food safety and compliance manager, MamaMia Produce,

The U.S. Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) final rule is in effect, and the full compliance date is January 2026.

Overall, this session didn’t deal as much with the rule, as with the ramifications of compliance. “It’s not a black-and-white issue,” says Siger.

Although not an easy rule to satisfy in application, FSMA 204 will have benefits in cases of food illness outbreaks, McEntire says. Backtracking to the actual cause can be a laborious process under present conditions, she explains, to the point of being barely possible.

“The idea of this rule, if perfectly implemented, would be that, if there are three different restaurants or grocery stores where the investigators go in the same circumstance and ask the same questions, they will be able to tell them the traceability lot number and a contact,” she says. “If you do that in three or four different places, if you see the same exact lot number comes up or the exact same contact comes up, you don’t have to go through every single point on the supply chain.”

Many companies have been less than enthusiastic about implementing the rule, with some hoping that a new administration might quash the rule. McEntire says that’s a long chance because the regulation would require significant effort to undo. Worse still, if a company is involved in an outbreak situation, officials can insist that it provide the required information and, if that information can’t be provided, that business is in violation and potentially subject to penalties.

Olson says John Vena has been moving toward compliance, but implementation is complex, especially in those cases when product is not properly labeled and out of compliance. If the company accepts products under those circumstances, John Vena could be in a position where it would have to initiate compliance.

Another challenge can arise from the combination of products in a delivery.

“If everything does come in, and you have 26 pallets of pineapples, you may have 100 lot numbers on there, so a big discussion is where are you going to store it? How are you going to properly separate everything so that you’re sending out this product with the correct information to the next person? Compliance is the goal. However, it becomes a little tricky when you don’t have space to do so,” Olson says.

“Another issue that comes along with that, is having the software to do so. We want to find ways to comply. On the market, there are companies that financially can’t come up with that.”

Chevez says at MamaMia, the company is working with the software it has in place and the provider to establish a system that will help with compliance. At the same time, MamaMia is a grower as well as a distributor, and so is in a position to help on the compliance issue.

“We are growers,” he says. “We’re trying to educate the growers who work with us.”

In the end, compliance requires internal alterations to business practices. However, because it affects the entire supply chain, FSMA compliance also requires cooperation from grower to retailer.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

The panel for the AI at Retail: How Can Artificial Intelligence Assist Operations at Store Level, hosted by Produce Business Publisher and Chief Executive Ken Whitacre included Jesse Himango, chief operating officer, Empower Fresh; and Michael Marzano, assistant professor of practice in food marketing, St. Joseph’s University, Philadelphia, PA.

Empower Fresh, which partners with independent grocers and wholesalers, offers tools and data that can help produce staff optimize their work days, and also can assist in staff training, food waste reduction and competitive positioning in the market.

As he uses experience and technology to help customers, Himango says he aids retailers and wholesalers in advancing how they conduct business by boosting efficiency and cutting costs. “I get to build the tools that I always wished I had as a retailer,” he says.

Empower Fresh is helping customers look at where they can benefit from AI, what works for them and how they can take steps to implement artificial intelligence in specific circumstances.

Himango says initial trepidation when it comes to discussing AI usually involves worry about the technology taking away jobs. “That’s not really the case,” he says.

Rather, because it can assume functions that are simple, but time-consuming, AI will free up more hours in the workday to spend on dealing with issues that require experience, thought and judgment.

“AI is going to make your job more effective, more efficient, less time-consuming, more productive,” he says. “It’s not going to really replace anybody’s job. However, I will say that somebody who adapts to AI, that person is probably going to take someone else’s job who is fighting it.”

As they learn about food marketing, says Marzano, whose experience includes stints at Nabisco, Kraft Foods, Cadbury, Mondelēz and Sysco, the approach he is taking with St. Joseph’s students is one of mutual efforts to “explore artificial intelligence capabilities” to discover where AI is most effective.

“I encourage them to use it for research,” says Marzano. “It’s a great tool for brainstorming. It’s a tool that still needs some validation. We do use it in class exercises for things like high-level, macro-level forecasting.”

Down the road, Marzano says, the application of AI will penetrate the entire supply chain in ways we’re just beginning to understand.

“We spend a lot of time trying to look at and understand what AI can do, not just for retailers, but for the consumer,” he says. “I think that’s where there is an opportunity, and I’m not sure it’s there yet, but AI has the potential to change how we shop and how we think of grocery shopping.”

The reality is, grocery shopping isn’t necessarily easy and gets more difficult for consumers who are dealing with special dietary needs. As they shop, Marzano says he watches consumers pick up products and try to read labels. If retailers build systems using AI to help consumers get the information they need quickly and more easily, they will get a positive response.

“This is where I think AI can help,” he says. “AI can know everything about every product in your store. It can tell the story of fresh as well as packaged.”

From the marketing point of view, retailers using AI can tap stored information about consumer backgrounds and habits to provide personalized information and inducements as they shop.

“It can know everything about recipes, it can know everything about health and diets and nutrition, and that’s just a wealth of information,” he says.

St. Joseph’s students worked with a Philadelphia retailer that was doing a pilot with an AI system that could provide that kind of shopper support. “It could do everything from helping shoppers to shop, including knowing everything about these products, everything about the pricing, the promotions and the location in the store,” says Marzano.

As noted, AI has been used in pricing operations for years, but it has become even more sophisticated over the past few years and is more readily available. As such, retailers can lean into AI to develop ever more effective pricing strategies.

“AI is very good at going through your history and saying, ‘hey, this price point generates the most units. This price generates the most dollars.’ It can be seasonal, too. It’s going to identify all these trends,” says Himango.

Himango points out that AI may be the key to dealing with a tough reality. Often, as the proportion of e-commerce sales goes up at a food retailer, the percentage of fresh goods sold declines because shoppers aren’t confronted with the sensory attraction of products, such as produce, meat and seafood.

“As e-com grows and AI explodes, how do we merchandise electronically and say the grapes are great, you’ve got to add this to your shopping cart? That’s what we’re going to have to evolve into,” says Himango.