Lost in the Supermarket

Today, Phil talks with Russ Morton, Mary Ginder and Tracy Frey to discuss Constant Contact’s AI Content Generator and how this technology can be used for food and grocery retailers to automate the copy drafting process for email, text and social media marketing campaigns.

Russ Morton, Chief Product Officer at Constant Contact  - As chief product officer, Russ Morton leads Constant Contact’s product roadmap and user experience initiatives, leveraging new and innovative technologies to build the marketing tools of the future for small businesses and nonprofits.

Mary Ginder, Owner of Gindo's Spice of Life - Mary and Chris Ginder co-own Gindo's Spice of Life, a small business based in St. Charles, Ill. that produces handcrafted hot sauces and spice blends.

Tracy Frey, Market Manager at Williamsburg Farmers Market - As Market Manager, Tracy oversees all the planning and operations for the Williamsburg Farmers Market, which operates 44 weeks a year on Saturday mornings.

John Carroll is Acosta Group President, Digital Commerce + Advanced Analytics. John has more than 30 years of experience in CPG, food and beverage and has held senior leadership positions in brand, sales, commercial, e-commerce and operations. Before joining Acosta in 2020 (then as chief growth officer) he was with The Coca-Cola Company for nearly 25 years and before that, P&G. John is here with us today to discuss some of the big topics for brands and retailers. 

Hanneke Faber is the Global President of the Nutrition Business Group at Unilever, with sales of over 13 billion and sales in more than 150 countries. She is also a member of the Unilever Leadership Executive Committee. She has been recognized by Fortune Magazine as one of the most influential international women in business. 

Welcome to Lost in the Supermarket. March is national nutrition month so who better to talk than a farmer and passionate chef about regenerative agriculture and its role in nutrition. 

Farmer Lee Jones created The Chef’s Garden’s over thirty-five years ago, and has remained tirelessly committed to not only ensuring that the family’s three-hundred-acre farm remains one of the most innovative and pioneering in the world, but to fostering a nuanced conversation with the chefs in our industry who look to the farm to grow vegetables that are as aesthetically pleasing on the plate as they are flavorful to the palate.

Dr. Amy Sapola is passionate about helping people achieve radiant health through reconnecting with their own intuition, nature, and deep nourishment as well as working on public health issues related to the social determinants of health, soil health, and planetary health. She is a Certified Wellness Coach, Institute for Functional Medicine Certified Practitioner and Doctor of Pharmacy with a B.S. in Nutrition. Dr. Sapola is the Director of Farmacy at The Chef’s Garden. 

Brad Sive is a media marketing executive who has a passion for learning about new foods, not just the enjoyment of food, but how food cooking and recipes intersect and bring people together. This passion led him to start Public Market with a team of longtime friends, a place where food, people and culture have become one. The core belief behind Public Market is that life's most meaningful moments happen when humans and food intersect. 

Sophie Sajnani is a young leader in the tech industry. During the pandemic, she heard about how Uber Eats and other food apps were taking a large cut of the restaurant's profits and how that was hurting restaurants. On that same day, she launched Bellevue Bites, a free and promotional platform that chairs deals from local restaurants when customers ordered directly from them rather than through a third party app. She has since hosted Five Food Crawls in two cooking classes in the US and Canada to raise over $15,000 for restaurants and other important causes. As she enters her last year of high school, she continues to explore how technology can be used for social good.

Today we are joined by Jon Melrod and  Tyler Daguerre

Jon Melrod was born into the political and cultural quiescence of the 1950's and grew up in apartheid-like Washington DC. Active in the student movement that opposed the Vietnam War and a supporter of black liberation, Jon embraced the ideology that the working class held the power to radically transform society. He left the campus for the factory in 1973. For thirteen years, he immersed himself in the day-to-day struggles of Milwaukee’s working class, both on the factory floor and in the political arena. Despite FBI surveillance and interference, Jon organized a militant rank-and-file caucus and rose through union ranks to a top leadership position in UAW Local 72. After a mass workforce cutback imposed by AMC’s joint venture partner Renault, he left to attend Hastings college of the law in San Francisco in 1985. Graduating cum laude with a JD, he opened a law firm in San Francisco successfully representing hundreds of political refugees. Jon is also the author of the soon-to-be-released book, Fighting Times (September 27, 2022)– PM Press, ISBN 1629639656

Tyler Daguerre is a Law School Graduate, barista and Organizer with Starbucks Workers United in Massachusetts.

One of the most talked about trends in the food world for the past few years has been meal kits. We’ve seen them come and go. We’ve been emailed offers to get 10 free meals. We’ve opened up the box and shook our heads in dismay at all the wasted packaging that it took to get these meals to us. Today we get to the truth about meal kits. 

Jackie Keller is one of the visionaries who imagined meal kits as a solution back in 1987 – decades before meal kits were a ‘thing’. She’s going to tell us the truth and help us peer into the future. Jackie Keller is the Founding Director of NutriFit, LLC, and TxokoUSA, a dining experiences company. She is also a National Board Certified Health & Wellness Coach with a specialty designation in Health and Wellness and is the author of Body After Baby: The Simple 30-Day Plan to Lose Your Baby Weight Fast, and is a nationally recognized health and nutrition educator, and Le Cordon Bleu-trained culinary expert.

Creating true omni-channel shopper engagement in the produce department requires touchpoints along the entire path-to-purchase, and these touchpoints have changed over the past three years. Join RDBA CEO, Phil Lempert and his guest Bonnie Taub-Dix, registered dietitian, media pro, and California Strawberry Commission spokesperson, as they discuss how working with media outlets has changed and how to effectively partner to drive produce sales.

Today we're gonna talk about vitamins. We're gonna talk about supplements, and we're gonna talk about a retailer who's really changing the way we're gonna be consuming our foods forever. With me, Elisa Sloss, senior VP of Health Markets and dietitians at Hy-vee. She oversees the sales, merchandising, and educational efforts of the company's more than 190 health market departments. It's a store within a store concept that features a strong and varied selection of organic products, specialty foods, all of what's designed to help support customers' dietary needs and health conditions. She also leads the company's team of retail dietitians whose mission it is to support customers in their health journey. 

Hy-Vee's dietitians support thousands of customers through store tours, virtual and in-person dietitian sessions and meal prep classes and workshops to help customers find foods and products to support their unique health goals. The team also offers routine health screenings for customers and employers, including biometric and cholesterol screenings and free A1C screenings. 

Also, joining us is Angie Nelson, a pharmacist and senior VP of Pharmacy at Hy-Vee. She's been with Hy-Vee over 20 years and began working as a registered pharmacist and over the years promoted to pharmacy manager, store director, pharmacy supervisor, vice president of pharmacy operations, and now the senior VP of Pharmacy. You can't get any higher except, you know, CEO. Now, Angie's helped implement artificial intelligence technology and machine learning models across Hy-vee's pharmacy space to improve patient adherence. And she's been named one of Progressive Grocers top women in grocery, twice. A drugstore news top women in health, wellness and beauty, and one of mass market retailers Most influential Women. She's also a member of the Hy-vee Hall of Fame.