March / April 2015

What's in it for employees to work together? At Whole Foods Market, their jobs depend on it. New job candidates at Whole Foods understand from the start how important teamwork is to their own performance.

For the third year in a row, Information Resources, Inc. (IRI) and The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) examined more than 400 CPG companies with annual U.S. retail sales of more than $100 million and ranked them based on their growth performance.

When a customer walks into one of the 154 Kroger-flagged stores that house The Little Clinic, she can have her sore throat examined steps away from the cooler full of ice cream that may soothe that throat. "The convenience offered by The Little Clinic, including being open seven days a week and

Culinary trends point increasingly to tangible experiences for consumers. These trends move quickly, as farm to table and molecular gastronomy may be haute cuisine one day and ruled out by something more regal in six months.

As CPG retailers expand with new ways of serving shoppers, such as mobile apps and click-and-collect online ordering, it is becoming increasingly important for their inventory and supply chain technologies to be connected seamlessly with these emerging customer interfaces. Retailers must be able

Photography by Vito Palmisano

Spring is about to commence in Chicago, I think, maybe, hopefully, and it's the time of year that everything renews itself.

There is a change occurring in how organizations and their leaders refine their diversity strategies–a change that begins with the very way in which "diversity" efforts are defined. "At the end of the day, diversity is about difference. There's no big, fancy definition.

The international aisles in the grocery store are expanding as food retailers in the United States seek to accommodate the broader set of cultural values and flavor palates of an increasingly diverse American population.

Even as more consumer packaged goods decisions revolve around Big Data, retailers and their suppliers are still in their own little worlds. "A CPG company tends to look in the rearview mirror," says Sandeep Dadlani, Atlanta-based executive vice president for India's Infosys Ltd.

Organic, natural and similar products have gained great momentum in the U.S.

A Letter from the President and CEO
Leslie G. Sarasin