Students delivered their capstone presentations in March, and two teams were selected to deliver again at the mid-April Western Association of Food Chains (WAFC) conference in Honolulu, HI. All of the topics demonstrated the level of innovation and future thinking that is developed among this talent pool. The featured topics at WAFC included The Age of You and Invisible Hands.

With Steve Case, entrepreneur, investor and co-founder of America Online, scheduled to speak in a few weeks at FMI Connect, I picked up his new book for a sneak peek at what words of wisdom a pioneer of the internet might offer today’s food retail audience. The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur’s Vision of the Future (Simon & Schuster, April 2016) is part memoir of the rise and fall of America Online (AOL) and part prediction of the industries and opportunities for the near future. There are lessons in both for grocers and those who work for and with them.

Andrew Harig, FMI senior director of sustainability, tax and trade, testified in front of the U.S. House of Representatives Agriculture Subcommittee on Nutrition yesterday, focusing on the issue of food prices and the consumer. He joined Jason Henderson, associate dean and director of Purdue Extension in Purdue University's College of Agriculture, and Ephraim Leibtag, assistant administrator of the Agriculture Department's Economic Research Service, on the witness panel.

Connecting to shoppers, especially Millennials is a tall order but the Food Marketing Institute’s (FMI) Fresh Executive Council is leading collaboration efforts across all fresh foods departments to bigger baskets and www.fmi.org/FreshFoods is your home for best practices, research and ideas on fresh foods in food retail.