Supermarket Perimeter - May 2019 - 20

teaching people skills and at the same time
giving them pay raises.

As we head into IDDBA '19, the
strength of perimeter grocery and
fresh foods is still growing. How
has the climate of the industry
changed since last year's show?
It is exciting times as we head into the summer
show with the resurgence of grocery store
sales. Speciﬁcally, foodservice and the growth
of grocerants, plant-based products and functional foods. These are categories that didn't
exist 5 years ago.
To me, it's critical for the success of retailers
to listen to their constituency, their patrons,
their guests that shop in their stores. They're
asking for this. They tell us what they want
with their wallets and their pocketbooks and
we need to give them exactly what they're
calling for. It's imperative that retailers give
additional space, assortment and promotions
to these products.

Supermarket Perimeter: What are
some of the biggest obstacles, in
your mind, for the industry?
FINDLAY: I stay up at night thinking about the
signiﬁcant amount of turnover we have in the
industry. We must solve this issue to improve
execution and sales.
It's hard work and it's not necessarily the
most highly compensated work. If someone
has the choice of making more money ﬂipping
burgers and getting a free lunch or working in
a grocery retailer where you have to do dishes
and go into a freezer, it's not glamorous.
I also think we as an industry aren't doing
a good job of training people and expanding
their capabilities and showing that this can
actually become a career. Being a dishwasher or a cook or something that might sound
mundane can just be the beginning stages of
an amazing career in the food industry.
We must do better at training people, empowering people and enlightening people.
At Fresh Thyme, for instance, we're
looking at various incentives to raise the
starting salary, but then also have quick-hit
incentives. If you ﬁnish a customer service
training, you get another quarter an hour,
or 50 cents an hour. If you pass a knife skills
training, you get another 25 cents an hour.
Same with charcuterie training.
It's kind of a two-pronged approach. You're
20 - MAY 2019

What goals do you have as a
board chairman for IDDBA?
We have several goals for this year.
We want to continue to drive education
and training in the industry to slow down the
incredible turnover we are experiencing.
Also, driving the focus on dairy and highlight the emerging new categories outside
of ﬂuid milk, like plant-based products and
functional beverages. This has exploded in
popularity.
And ﬁnally, pushing the trend of natural and
organic products. People want to eat healthier,
feed their family better and live longer and
therefore this segment of the grocery world is
growing faster than traditional stores.
Fresh Thyme embodies and is passionate
about the nimbleness to stay relative and resonate with customers today. That's certainly the
natural and organic channel, but at a value. We
just want to make natural and organics affordable to more people and become that gateway
for changing the way people eat.
We're very passionate about that. Healthy
eating, healthy values. That's our goal.

What will that increased
focus on dairy look like?
There will be much more of a critical mass to
the number of retailer participants that have
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dairy purchasing responsibilities.
Historically, from the supplier base, we've
only had maybe a handful of true dairy suppliers. This year, we think it's going to be close
to 250, or even more, dairy speciﬁc suppliers
showing their products.
We've been attempting to steal second and
keep our foot on ﬁrst by inviting retailers to
come and saying there will be more supplier
participation while at the same time asking
suppliers to come show their products because there will be more retailers. It's worked
out perfectly.
We're going to give signiﬁcant space to
them. One of the pillars of emphasis in the
What's In Store space will be centered on dairy
as well.
For me, what's precipitated that were some
conversations I had with dairy experts. They
were convinced that, by deﬁnition, dairy needs
to be milk that comes from a cow.
If you stick with that mindset, you'll go the
way of the dinosaur. If you look at a dairy
department today, it's nothing like what your
parents or grandparents shopped in. There are
all sorts of milk alternatives.
Some emphasis and lobbying is going on
that almond milk might have to be called an
almond drink, or a soy drink or banana drink.
That hasn't come to be yet. It might, it might
not. All I know is that if you look at dairy, sales
are down more than 30% from just several
years ago and it's come at the gain of these
plant-based alternatives.
Plant-based dairy is growing exponentially, and we just want to make sure that we
emphasize that in our show. One of the Ds is
'dairy' and we want to bring that back.

A big change in this year's show is the
transition of the Show & Sell Center
to the newly named What's In Store
Live. What can attendees expect,
and what went into that change?
I am really excited about that. As we met as
a leadership group and a steering committee
for this, we realize that we spend a signiﬁcant
amount of time, energy and ﬁnancial resources in putting that document -What's In Store
- together. We just thought that we should
make sure we're resonating and continuing the
message with that.
A lightbulb kind of went off for everyone
in this steering committee meeting. We said,

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Supermarket Perimeter - May 2019

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