Letter from the editor

The phrase "high-tech" entered the national lexicon in the 1960s as the computer and electronics industries took off. Before long, it became a synonym for anything modern and over time various sectors of the economy adopted the "tech" suffix to signify their advanced state of digital affairs.

I had to fight down an impulse to tell them, “You’re millennials! Don’t you know you’re supposed to be using a smartphone?”

I'm not sure that applies literally any more, given the international concerns that have pushed to the forefront in this season's presidential race. But I do think that, even if localness is less important in politics, it's steadily becoming more so in groceries.

These are the drivers that reportedly will move the CPG retail industry into a brave new world that we can only imagine today. At the crux of this effort is new product development, because after all, new products are the lifeblood of the industry, right?

One of the challenges of your job, and mine, is to sort through and prioritize the vast amount of information that lands on our desks. No doubt each news report, invitation or query has some merit, but it's impossible to attend to every request or make note of every piece of information.