January / February 2017

It's a warehouse. It's not that complicated. These two themes come up repeatedly during a conversation with Costco President and CEO Craig Jelinek and EVP of Merchandising Ron Vachris.

While there can be plenty of debate about the vitality of the U.S.

We recently published a study sizing up the risks of counterfeiting that indicated a tenth of all food purchases in the developed world are in some way contaminated by counterfeit ingredients.

The biggest question for the future of online grocery commerce comes down to the last mile. As in, who's going to drive it—retailers or customers? Food retailers who want to use online commerce will have to make a hard choice between three major options: delivery, store pickup or both.

Ambitious sustainability goals Walmart revealed in late 2005 were dismissed by some at the time as a publicity stunt on the part of a company looking to bolster its reputation.

Use of the word friction in a retail context sounded strange the first time I heard it.

Artificial intelligence clearly reached buzzword utopia in 2016, but the groundwork was laid back in 2011 by the appearance of IBM Watson on the TV game show "Jeopardy!" The artificial intelligence (AI) computing platform made headlines by easily beating its human competitors.

Consumer confidence remains high for the grocery industry, per FMI's U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends research.

Amazon's announcement of a new pilot program that offers customers a boundary-less experience for shopping and checkout is justly being positioned as a game-changer for the food retail industry and greater retail supply chain.

Ideally, the best part of online shopping is the convenience, while the best part of in-store shopping is the experience. Virtual reality has the potential to combine the two. VR is still an infant technology, now used mostly for gaming and novelty videos.

A Letter from the President and CEO
Leslie G. Sarasin

I've always posited that food should be more like fashion. Similar to the latest trends in lapels and color palettes, consumers' palates are attuned to what's hot in the food world.