As her employees and customers navigated unchartered territory this past year, Katie Swenson not only provided the map and guidance for safe passage but discovered new treasure along the way.

In this time of rapidly unfolding changes, accelerated and amplified during the pandemic, embracing artificial intelligence (AI) allows you to predict customers’ purchases while also empowering employees to use data to truly anticipate shopper needs. Beyond data tied to behaviors and purchases, AI enables food retailers to evaluate their current practices and helps virtually every participant in the supply chain make informed, actionable decisions from start to finish.

In the world of payments of policy, we often have to take the long view and the incremental wins along the way. Right now, we are on the precipice of what could be one of those incremental, but very important wins: Late last week the Federal Reserve proposed a clarification to the 2010 debit reform law that if finalized could save U.S. merchants billions each year.

FDA has launched a new quarterly podcast series that will examine the various aspects of the Agency’s New Era of Smarter Food Safety Blueprint. FMI’s Hilary Thesmar, chief food and product safety officer and SVP, food safety programs was invited to participate in the inaugural FDA TechTalk Podcast to explore the topic of tech-enabled traceability.