Nobody profits when drivers wait in the loading dock of a distribution center for teams to load or unload their trucks. It costs everybody in food retail. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration estimates “detention time,” or dwell time, costs trucking companies $3 billion a year and, if you carry that over to the larger economy, the price the consumer ultimately pays is closer to $6.5 billion a year.

Gold Plate Award winner, Produce for Better Health Foundation (PBH),and the Food Marketing Institute (FMI) Foundation, partnered this past September to educate more families about the value of shared, produce-packed meals.

The meal kit - in which a consumer receives everything needed to prepare a “home-cooked” meal - has had a short, but colorful history. Meal kit companies that have been around for as long as four or five years seem like sturdy industry veterans. There are now more than 150 companies offering some form of meal kit product. Their ups and downs have been the grist for many a news story in the financial press that covers food retail.

With the exception of a handful of states, the governors have laid out their 2019 agendas at the feet of the people and into the hands of their legislature. And almost every governor hit on what I call the “big four” - education, healthcare, infrastructure and opioid funding.