Health and wellness is at the heart of almost every food retail success story this year. Significantly, according to the 2018 Food Retailing Industry Speaks research, industry executives identified the consumer health and wellness proposition (81 percent) and leveraging food to manage/avoid health issues (72 percent) as the top two trends creating a positive impact on business. In addition, they identified fresh foods and private brands as their top differentiation strategies to increase their competitive advantage. FMI’s 2018 health and wellness program combined each of these three trends to generate more opportunities for food retailers to showcase health and wellness in their fresh foods and private brand strategies.

The age of the digitally engaged food shopper has arrived, with each day seeing more shoppers moving from experimenting with online food shopping to fully embracing it. Total digital maturation in online grocery shopping is a mere five to seven years away according to research prepared by FMI and Nielsen.

People learn in different ways. Some of us are visual learners. Others better retain information by hearing things explained. Another group learns best from performing its own research. Some prefer having a hands-on experience and others just want quick 1-2-3 take-a-ways. In 2018, FMI’s education team experimented with maximizing our reach by providing the food retail industry with multiple ways of learning.

Providing the retail food industry with the myriad products and services that FMI offers requires resources—both human and financial capital. To avoid being a one-pronged fork, any well-run business endeavors to diversify its revenue sources and FMI is no different in that regard.