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- [00:00]
A
Hi, I'm Doug Baker, Vice President of Industry Relations at FMI and you're listening to the CPG Guys Podcast.
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B
Hello and welcome to the CPG Guys Podcast. Set at the intersection of commerce and
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C
tech, your hosts Sri Rajagopelan and Peter
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B
V. S Bond explore how brands and retailers engage consumers in a digitally driven world. And now, here are the CPG guys.
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D
Hello and welcome to this episode of the CPG Guys podcast. I'm of course Sree, your co host and also CRO and co founder of ThinkBlue Consulting, your trusted partner in your omnichannel development journey of retail. Get in touch with me at sri@thinkblueconsulting co to listen to my older daughter's music at www.rearaj.com at the time of this recording will be live in Phoenix Arena April 3rd and I'm honored she asked me to chaperone her for that trip so I get to go backstage. Do follow Laraj My younger daughter is a member of the world's fastest growing global girls group, Kat Slate, who just are wrapping up a four city tour South America. Lollapalooza. After this recording I'll actually get to watch him on the Internet as they perform down in Sao Paulo. I'm joined today by my co host and co founder pvsp, also Moonlight's head of industry and client engagement at Flywheel, the commerce acceleration division of Omnicom. Peter, the weekend is upon us. What fun events do you have planned with Nadia?
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C
Well, not much because Nadia is in Brooklyn for the EID celebration with some family members. So I am alone until Sunday when you and I head out to Las Vegas to attend the 2026 Shop Talk event. So I'm mostly doing stuff around the house this weekend. Nothing exciting. Spring's almost sprung. I not quite gotta do a little yard work but. But that's it. Now what I'm really gearing up about SRI is I'm thinking out into the future. I'm thinking about two big events we got coming up. I'm thinking about Can Lions. Well, Cannes Lions. So that's the. That's June 20th to the 26th. Every year we do something bigger and better and we're going big. This year we have a residence in collaboration with the FMCG guys. We'll be doing all sorts of activations. Stay tuned to this podcast and our LinkedIn page to learn more about how you can collaborate with us. We'll be doing breakfast events, content sessions, we'll have some happy hours and we'll even have some late Night evening soirees at the residence of the CPT guys in the FMCG Guys. Second of all, SRI End of July.
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A
Wait, wait.
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D
Before you get to the second one, are you saying this year you figured out how you can grab me a bathroom bigger than me?
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C
No, no. You still get the smallest bathroom. You're always going to get the small bathroom. And I'm even thinking about giving you the room with the twin beds.
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D
The room where it happens, though.
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C
The room where it happened. The room where it happened. But Cornell is the other big thing now, you know? Last year, in partnership with Cornell University and the Johnson School of Business, we launched the first ever retail media strategy exec ed program. Well, this year we're doing it bigger and we're doing it better. And this is what I mean by it. Last year, we did it in New York City at the satellite campus at Cornell Tech. This year, we're taking it to Ithaca, the home stage of Cornell University. We're going from about 50 to 75 participants, and we're broadening from retail media to truly Omni Commerce. So the first ever Omni Commerce leadership program will be held the week of July 27th. Ithaca at Cornell. We have got a Cracker Jack curriculum. The room's already full. Sree. I think we can count on maybe one hand how many seats are left. So, like even advertising right now about this on the podcast. I'm afraid by the time people call, there may not even be any seats left. But we're putting together this really great program. It is the blood, sweat and tears of the CPG guys and our friends that think blue putting this all together. We know it will be the room where it happens. From a networking, from a collaboration standpoint, it's a big event. Cornell university. Go to cbdguys.com you'll find a link to the page to tell you more about it right in the navigation bar.
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D
Sounds like Peter. We have quite the tour going on. Let's just make sure that it's not a commotion tour. And sounds like the events we have are both gnarly, but let's ensure we don't go mi get it. Wink, wink.
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C
We got to keep in touch.
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A
Sri.
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D
All right, folks, make sure you're subscribing to our podcast on your preferred listening platform where you can get our latest episodes. Go back and consume some of this. Close to 600 episodes we've already published. Now let's get to our guest of honor. We spent a lot of time analyzing the digital shelf, but today we're tackling a hard truth the grocery industry has historically lacked. When it comes to adopting advanced technologies like AI, seamless omnichannel integration, e commerce and modernizing the physical store for consumer AKA shopper customer experience, that narrative is shifting one way or another rapidly. The industry poured over $10 billion into technology investments in 2024 alone. Grocers and CPGs are waking up into the fact that they can no longer operate in silos if they want to meet modern shop expectations. In fact, AI is going to force it. And to talk about the ultimate forum designed to fix this, we bought an incredible guest to the show today who I get a chance to work with in a different capacity. Joining us is Doug Baker, the Vice President of Industry Relations at fmi, the Food Industry Association. Doug is an absolute titan in this industry with 35 years of experience plus in food retail starting back in 84 with Fry's Food Stores. Throughout his career has held massive leadership roles across retail ops, consumer packaged goods, private brands at Fry's, Kraft, Nabisco, Federated Foods and 3L FMI. He leads the Tech Leadership Council, Supply Chain Council, Private Brands Council and Asset Protection Council. Man, you got a handful of stuff going on. He's a trusted advisor to CEOs, other senior leaders in retail and CPG and is frequently sought out by publications like the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and of course the CPG guys. His favorite Doug is here to talk about an innovative new FMI event called Grocery Lab taking place June two to four. 2026 is the historic Gem Theater in Detroit. Doug, welcome to the CPG guys. And folks listening in, don't be surprised if you see us refer to it frequently here on our LinkedIn page. Doug, pleasure to have you man. Thanks for doing this on a Friday afternoon. How you doing?
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A
I'm doing great, Sree and Peter, thanks for having me. And I had to tell you, Sree, as of January 1st, we added another topic to that portfolio which I'm really excited that I now have the opportunity to work with non foods as well. Anything that's non consumable. So it's been a blast to be able to do the things that I do through FMI on behalf of this on behalf of this industry. So thanks for having me.
- [06:59]
D
That's why we invited you to the show today because it's a collective responsibility to shape the future of this industry. So we're looking forward to that. In the digital liner notes of this episode, we'll include links to your LinkedIn profile and your company's corporate websites for our listeners to access while we go on with the conversation. So I'm going to jump right in, Doug. So here's question number one. You get to see the serious side of SRI and think blue consulting, working with you on very tactical industry agenda and issues. And now you get to see the fun media site. So I'm just kidding, Doug. Question one is given we have a lot of ground to cover. Your background, of course I mentioned, is legendary. You know, you've done retail ops, supply chain, private brands, you're touching non foods now over three decades. And how do you feel your deep hands on operational type background informed your view and where the grocery industry is today regarding its historical struggle with tech adoption? Why are we struggling to adopt tech?
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A
Yeah, sri. I think what my background or my experience in the industry over the last 40 years has taught me is that grocery has never lacked ingenuity. It's often lacked the conditions to scale it. You know, this industry is built on execution and thin margins and enormous complexity. And if you spend time in operations or supply chain merchandising, then you know, you understand that even the best idea has to survive some other realities, which are store labor and network constraint and legacy systems and competing priorities. So, you know, historically technology adoption in grocery has been slower. Not because leaders didn't see the opportunity, but it's because the business had very little room for disruption. Right. It was a big risk to add that kind of complexity and unknown to the systems for many years, technology decisions were made in functional silos. While the actual work of grocery has always been deeply interconnected, which created a gap between innovation and operational adoption. Today the pressure is different. The labor challenges, margin pressure, shopper expectations and supply chain volatility are forcing the industry to think more holistically and cross functionally. So the data, the opportunity now is not just to buy more technology. It's how do you connect the strategy and the data and the people and the process in a way that makes it execution even easier. So that's for me where the industry is heading and that's what makes this moment and this event that we're going to put on so important.
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C
Doug, welcome back to the CPG Guys podcast. We're excited to have you here to talk about this. We're really excited about going to Grocery Lab happening this June in Detroit. I hope by the time we get there, as a proud Canadian expat, I'll be able to ride across the Gordie Howe Bridge after the legendary hockey player. FMI president Leslie Saracen recently stated that the mission is to reduce the friction between bold ideas and real world execution. Calling this event a launch pad rather than just a gathering. What's the origin story of Grocery Lab? And why was Detroit chosen as the backdrop for this launch pad?
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A
Yeah, I mean, the origin story of Grocery Lab is you guys know better than anybody. We, we attend a lot of events and there's no shortage of ideas, there's no shortage of innovation. But what we have a tendency to do is we spend a lot of time on the what and the so and the so what, but we don't spend enough time on the now what and so. As retailers are constantly looking for ways to remove friction from the consumer's life, they're actually creating confliction for themselves. Right. It's all of these point solutions that come together to make this great experience for a consumer to be able to shop where they want, when they want, how they want, but they're creating all the extra friction for themselves. Because we as an industry haven't come together collaboratively to develop and bring solutions to retailers. We're bringing points solutions to retailers. So Detroit, think about Detroit, what Detroit's been through. It's the heart of America. Back in manufacturing days, the automobile industry, and it went through some really difficult times and they had to get creative. They had to think about how they were going to survive as a city, as a community. And they did it. And they've come back and what they've done there has been, in my opinion, pretty amazing. And they just opened their first skyscraper in 50 years. But they celebrate their history, they celebrate their culture. And so what we wanted to try to accomplish as an underlying message is that we have a rich history. I would say that the grocery industry is a national treasure. Right? We feed communities, but we also need to continue to move at the pace of a consumer that is moving at the pace of technology. And that's not easy to do. And if you don't have the courage and the ability to adapt as an organization, then you're going to continue to fall behind. Because it's not just an easy upward curve of growth. It's, it's exponential growth that we're experiencing. So we wanted Detroit to sort of say that message. The automobile industry was bankrupt in the early 2000s. Thousands. And look at them now. They're innovating. And some of it's on their own, some of it's through regulation. No different than the grocery industry. So there's a lot of connective tissue between the grocery industry and Detroit and what they both stand for.
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D
Detroit it is and we look forward to visiting. I think that's early summer, so it should be absolutely fantastic. So you position Grocery Lab as the food industry's first cross functional kind of behavior shifting forum. And I can't emphasize enough about behavior shift. And one of the things that holds our industry back is we hang on to anniversary and that's how we run the industry. And our behavioral focus has been, hey, I know it all. I've done this 20, 30 years in the industry, my way is the best way, things of that nature. So when we sit through conferences, we see a lot of talking head presentations. I think you're talking about Grocery Lab being hands on kind of think tank format, think tank format. And it'll actively help merchants, technologists, CPG brands co design a zero fiction grocery ecosystem. What does that mean?
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A
Yeah, I mean the difference, the way I look at Grocery Lab is it's to your point, it's designed for participation, not passive consumption. Right. So it's not about sitting there and seeing somebody on a stage show me some slides and tell me things that I should, I should be thinking about or doing. It's actually doing them. So it's about taking multiple technologies that are collaborative that sort of like bring to life an experience. And why it needs to be cross functional is that this would be a very different event if I was just talking to technologists or if I was just talking to commercial leaders. They would be very different events. But what we want to do is we want to bring them together because that's where the work really gets done, you know, and a lot of times it is separate and then it ends up back at the, at the ranch. And that's where the tension comes in because they weren't in this discussion together, they didn't see the technology together, they didn't design the strategy together. One is bringing it and the other one's going to execute it. So we wanted to bring them both together. So if you think about it, this is an opportunity for technologists to take their company hat off and put their professor of technology hat on. And this is an opportunity for commercial leaders who don't actually live in the technology world on a day in and day out basis to get some real hands on experience with the various labs that are going to be worked through. And so that's sort of been our charge to our lab leaders and our founding partners is that you have to engage the attendees. There's, there's gotta be a use case that they work through. There's gotta be what I Like to say is that they gotta watch you make the sausage, they gotta be a part of making the sausage so that when they leave there, they get a really stronger grasp of what it is that the technology's doing to, to evolve and advance their business.
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D
So it sounds like Doug, this is gonna be very hands on. And when you say participation, they'll get a chance to touch, feel the participants as opposed to just listen to expert presentations from a stage like most other conferences. Is that factual?
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A
It's factual. And take another step. SRI it's not just one technology and one retailer standing on a stage. It's multiple technologies and multiple retailers having a conversation together, collaborating across technologies. So not only cross functional titles, but cross functional technologies are going to be coming together to make an experience come to life.
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C
SREE this is full circle for me. My first business trip in the CPG industry after getting out of business school was to fly to Detroit, go up to Troy. I had a call on Kmart and the next day it was at Farmer Jack and now defunct retailer that was part of the great Atlantic and Pacific Tea company. So I'm actually really excited and, and I will, I will make mention the fact that at the time I was carrying my laptop computer because I was doing space management. The laptop computer was the size of a carry on suitcase. It was so big and it had, it was a 286 at best. It was anytime I tried to put an image into a space management software, it would crash the computer. So I am very optimistic, Doug that
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A
what we talk about.
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D
PETER When I started my career at IRI and I had to travel, I had to carry a modem with me at 14k modem which was heavier than the laptop.
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C
I love the, the sound of that just brings soothing to my, my heart shree but so Doug, let's look at the numbers. FMI's State of Technology report recently revealed that the industry invested more than $10 billion in technology in 2024 to modernize operations. Yet you still talk about the friction between bold ideas and execution. So I guess my question is with all that money flowing, where is the execution friction actually happening the most right now in the grocery sector?
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A
Yeah. So the friction is from here, the world According to Doug, the friction is really showing up less in willingness to invest and more in the industry's ability to integrate. And then you add on top of it. Where do you place your bets? Because everything's moving so quickly. If I move now is six months from now, that's not gonna be valid anymore. And something else gonna overtake it because the advancements are coming so quickly. So grocery companies are making some serious commitments on technology. And I think we've come a long ways, you know, this slow mover thing, I think we need to start celebrating some of the things that we have done, understanding we still have a long ways to go, but it's because we're not attempting to do it. We're not astute enough to do it. We don't have enough money to do it. Really. It's coming at such a pace that you have to be very methodical as to how you're going to invest the money because you don't want to miss out on the next opportunity. So if you think about it, when execution becomes difficult, when solutions are layered onto fragmented data as well. And how long have we been talking about data? So, I mean, I've been at FMI for 13 years now and in the industry since 83 or 84. And we've been talking about good, clean, accurate, complete, unified data since then. Every single time we have another sort of stake in the ground happen that just really grounds why data is so important. And unified data is so important, it accelerates. Smart label, that was one of the first ones. Fisma traceability, that was another one. Artificial intelligence, that's the most recent one. And I think, you know, when you start looking at everything that a retailer has to do, and for that matter a CPG company has to do in order to be able to prepare, to be able to take advantage of some of these technologies, I think that's, it's, it's a daunting thing, you know, so as a major friction point, it's data harmonization. How do I get all of that data into one place? It's, you know, technology adoption is not just a systems issue, it's a people and process issue. So how do I adapt my organization and get them embraced onto this new technology? If teams are not aligned around the same metrics and the same workflows and the same priorities, even strong investments can underperform. And we all know that most technologies don't fail because they're bad technologies. They fail because the organization wasn't able to improve, embrace them across the organization. So it's, it's really hard to put your finger on any one thing. But I always say you can't build a solid house on a weak foundation. And data is the foundation.
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D
No debate. Data is the foundation here on the CPG guys, Peter and I will never debate that. But it, I'm going to go squarely into AI, because AI depends on a good, solid, clean data backbone, as it's for the LLMs. That very report that we've kind of briefly highlighted now showed a massive disparity. 93% of food suppliers using AI, but only 47% of food retailers doing that. That's like half. That's a glaring adoption gap between trading partners. Will Grocery Lab take AI head on, try to showcase the role of AI for retailers as well? So retailers and brands can actually speak the same language?
- [21:08]
A
Yeah, you know, the gap is significant and it matters because the future of grocery will be shaped by how effectively trading partners work together. And I think we're starting to see some real opportunities or we're starting to see some examples. But it's not how far one side advances on its own. It's if suppliers are accelerating AI adoption while many retailers are still building confidence, use cases and internal readiness, then the risk is that the industry develops unevenly and they'll start missing opportunities for shared value. And that's really, at the end of the day, what we're looking for. We think Grocery Lab is going to help bridge that divide by creating a common working space where retailers and suppliers and technology leaders can engage around those practical use cases rather than abstract concepts. So the focus is not on who is ahead, it's on how the industry moves forward together, where they're at, because that's the other thing. Not everybody can be, you know, the large retailer out of Bentonville, Arkansas. Right. We're all in a different place. Not everybody can be a multinational CPG company with endless resources. So how do we help people move together from where they're at? You know, through the labs, the participants are going to examine where AI can improve planning, forecasting, supply chain, coordination, content, personalization, you name it, and just as importantly, what foundational conditions are required to make those efforts successful. So, you know, what helps organizations speak the same technology language is not just terminology. It is a shared understanding of the data, the decision points, the constraints, the outcomes. So Grocery Labs is being designed to create that shared understanding, to give both the trading partners a chance to move beyond these isolated experimentation toward a more aligned, scalable application of AI across the value chain. Which I think if you talk to anybody, everybody thinks they're behind on AI. I don't know of anybody that really thinks that they're leading. Everybody's afraid they're not quite keeping up. So we're hoping to solve for that there.
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D
Let me remind our audience that I'm speaking to Doug Baker, vice president of industry relations at fmi. Over to you.
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C
Thanks, Sri. So, Doug, let's actually talk about the physical store, which as we know in groceries where most sales occur.
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B
Right.
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C
We're talking like 85, 90% of sales. Right. Your research is showing that 86% of retailers are experimenting with in store tech to improve efficiency and 80% to enhance the customer experience. However, the grocery store layout hasn't fundamentally changed in decades. Right. So how does Grocery Lab plan to tackle the practical integration of technology directly into the aisles?
- [24:06]
A
Yeah, I think if you look at our Connected Store Lab is a good example of this. Right. There's, there's two sides of that conversation. There's the sexy side of connected store and there's the not so sexy side of connected store. They're both important, but they both serve a different purpose. One is to delight the consumer, to make the consumer more efficient, to get them to put more in their basket, to increase their trips by driving more loyalty. It even is to help employees be more efficient, which ultimately benefits the consumer. Then you got the other side, focused on forecasting, focused on waste management, focused on loss prevention, focused on all of those things that just need to happen behind the scenes but aren't as fun to talk about. I think that without changing the entire format of the store, it's looking at those technologies that are going to make that experience or that visit much more efficient for the customer as well as help the employees be more efficient so that the retailer experiences all of the sales and profit they can.
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D
All right, so let's talk shopper and shopper engagement for a bit. So very clearly the actual vision of Grocery Lab kind of states that we need to reimagine shopping to a place where loyalty isn't just a number and a discount and a repeat of that purchasing behavior, but a data driven relationship that's based on individual relevance. How do we move the grocery industry away from Legacy paper coupons, FSIs and things of that nature, and pure trade span into predictive, relevant engagement that becomes a meaningful loyalty driver versus just a value on a piece of paper for a discount.
- [25:55]
A
Yeah, you know, AI is going to play a significant role in that and we're already starting to see some early signs of that in Grocery Lab. We're looking forward to sharing with the attendees what some of the technologies are working on today. I agree with, uh, you know, there's. I'm not, I'm not a huge fan and I've been in this business and love this business, but I need my phone number in order to Get a discount on a product. I don't know how that drives loyalty.
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D
Right.
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A
It obviously hasn't reduced the number of stores the consumer shop at because they're still shopping at the same or more than today than they were 10 years ago or 15 years ago. So but it, for me, the first step is personalization and hyper personalization. So if you're going to give me a discount, give me the discount that means something to me. Not to Peter, not to sri. Peter and SRI need discounts, but probably on different things. It may be at different levels.
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D
Right.
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A
That's the other thing you think about too. If we're working on such a thin profit margin and we're just using trade to spend to give a $2 coupon on something or $1.50 coupon or something when I didn't really need it, that's just throwing trade dollars away. Imagine being in this always on state where in the digital environment you're able to give those coupons in a more real time, on all time state, which is motivating customers to put not only that product in there, but more products in there. I think that's really sort of the first step. But then I think we also need to start looking at adjacencies. You know, if you look at, if you look at the travel agency and the travel industry, you know, I'm a lifetime gold member on American Airlines. It means I'm in zone number four. Not a big deal. It doesn't mean much. And if you're not lucky to be a million miler, you might have had your, your points might have lost half their value. But you look at Marriott, people stay at a Marriott if they're a Marriott person. So there's these connections between consumers and brands. And I think what retailers need to start figuring out is what is that connection point that's going to continue to bring them back to their banner and it might be something that's adjacent outside of their own store. Four walls. And I think there's an opportunity to spend more time there.
- [28:22]
C
It's funny you mentioned the Marriott situation. Doug Shree is a devout Marriott ambassador member and I'm a Hilton diamond member and we're always jockeying to see who wins out in the hotel selection between the two of us because we all want our points and sometimes we will stay at different hotels just to get our points. But, but I, I absolutely agree with you. You know, you mentioned something very important about what does it mean because of phone number is you input that one. I remember doing some work about 15 years ago when I was at Dunn Humby doing some work for Kroger and we were doing primary research and we're asking people, and remember we used to carry around the frequent shopper cards on our keychain, little barcodes. We'd have like eight on a keychain. We would ask them, what does this one do for you? What does it. Of the eight, we were lucky if they knew what one of those was for, but they just habitually put it out. It didn't drive any loyalty. To your point, they still went to all the stores they went to. Only one was actually meaningful. Oh, I get fuel rewards with that. Oh, I get off shelf discounts with that. And so to your point, it has to be very clearly identified in the mind of the consumer for it to have any value. So I want to talk to you a little bit about roadblocks to relevance in internal silos. Right. Merchandising doesn't always talk to the supply chain and it often operates independently of marketing. Right. So Grocery Lab is bringing chief merchants, chief operating officers, chief information officers, chief technical officers, chief marketing officers and retail media leaders all into the same room. All of the stakeholders, how do you coerce, how do you influence, how do you, I hate to use the word force, but get them to actually, these disparate functions, to actually co develop solutions together. What is the mechanism that's going to get them all to say, we need a common solution that drives outcomes?
- [30:26]
A
Well, I think, I think the importance of how you do that is the experience part of it. So if you think about, you know, going to say go to ces, right? We were there, great event. If you have three days to get through it and you're lucky enough to find everything that it was that you're looking for, then you're a winner. Right. The problem is, is most of the time you find one or two things but you don't find everything. And then you don't actually understand exactly what you need to do with it when you get it back. But you saw something that made sense to you. I'm trying to solve for this issue. This makes sense to me. I'm going to take this back and I'm going to figure it out. That's where the tension starts, I think by doing this cross functional conversation. You know, this is happening a lot more these days and it's, it's not such a nuance anymore in boardrooms that you don't see all of these individuals sitting down and talking strategy anymore. And I think the real Reason for that is, is because of the pace of technology. So as an industry, as a trade association, I think it's our responsibility to build those platforms that allow those individuals to come together and actually walk through that. It's no different than doing an exercise for, for an emergency response moment. You got to do these things over and over again to actually understand how they benefit you as a team in order to benefit the organization. And so we have a responsibility, anybody that does events now has a responsibility to put an event together that really brings these people together and gives them something tangible that they can do when they get back to their organizations.
- [32:07]
D
Such a high profile, exciting event that you talk of which will have experiential capabilities hands on could not have been done just in a vacuum by fmi. You probably worked with some sort of a founding committee that probably had enough supplier leaders along with, I've heard a great firm called Think Blue to design this forum. How does unfiltered insights from all of your founding committee inform and shape these specific hardening themes? And I think you have seven that you'll be tackling at the Gem Theater Life.
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A
Yeah, we have seven labs and they range anywhere from AI and data all the way down to value creation. We have a wonderful team that I've been sree. It's been a year that we've been working on this project and it was a year earlier when I actually started having conversations inside of FMI about it. You know, we don't need another conference to have a conference. If we're going to do something, we need to do something unique, different and relevant. And so that was my goal. And when we felt like we could do that, we did. We reached out to Think Blue because we had this great idea, but we know we needed help. We needed to also get out from outside of the association conference scope that we've created. There's a culture with inside of association conferences as well that we were trying to break. We wanted to do something different. We have a great advisory group of individuals that are inside the industry and support the industry and are outside of the industry in adjacent industries that are doing stuff really unique in industry because we needed them to sort of help us get out of our own way in our historical belief and thinking. Again, if you go back to what is the underlying messages we have to continue to be relevant and evolve. And so everything that we've done from the way we put it together, the way the advisors panel was pulled together, the way we're even the language that we're using it's not a keynote, it's a briefing. Right. So everything that we're doing, we're trying to do a little bit differently because we need to continue to think about things differently. That's what technology is forcing us to do.
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D
You refer to this color, Pink, Blue. Were those guys any good?
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A
They were wonderful.
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C
I love that, how they paint their faces and they throw liquid out into the audience in Vegas. And in those are. I love the Blue man group. We'll try to see them in Vegas. Let's do that. All right, so Doug, let me wrap this up. Executive time is one of the most scarce resources in our industry and frankly, in most industries. Right. When these leaders walk out of the Gem Theater In Detroit on June 4, what is the tangible takeaway? What actionable insights or blueprints will they have in their hands to prove this was a game changing event?
- [35:07]
A
Yeah, well, it's you, you mentioned blueprint and in your hands. Because every attendee will receive a playbook. They'll be receiving information up front and understand there's only going to be 200 people in this. It's a by invitation only. You can't just go onto the website and register. It's very concierge, it's very white gloved. You're going to get information that you're going to have up front that explains to you how the event's going to work, what your role is and how you need to think through it. You're going to have a playbook that's going to help you through each one of the labs, anywhere from taking notes to understanding definitions, maybe some key takeaways that you need to take back to your organization. And then there's going to be information for you to take home. And then we're not letting them go. This is more than event, this is a movement. So these attendees will be put into cohorts and we'll keep them together for an entire year and we'll have digital touch points with them throughout the year. And it will be an opportunity for the founding partners and lab leaders and FMI and our advisors to bring new information to them. It'll be an opportunity for them to ask us questions, ask their peers questions as they continue to work against their roadmaps. When they go back to their organizations, it'll continue to help them drive this courage to make these changes. And it's scary. You know, I've been in this business since I was 17 years old. You can't make. It's hard to make, really just change. Ground shaking change decisions in the grocery industry because we live on such a small margin. So we've, we've got it. We as a group, we can do this.
- [36:57]
D
All right. Exciting times indeed. And sounds like the CPG guys will be there at Grocery Shop. Indeed. We're looking forward to it. So let me remind our listeners, you can find all of our content by simply going to a web Browser and typing cpguys.com as the simple URL. If you or someone you know has something to contribute to this ongoing discussion on the CPG guys, leave us an email at contactpguys.com that easy to our audience. We thank you for the clicks, likes, comments, DMs, meeting us at trade shows, coming to our events, recording episodes with us and all our sponsors. We're grateful for you. The show doesn't exist without all of you. You work with us all year. We're grateful to have you as an audience and partners. When Peter and I started this in the summer of 2020, we had no idea we'd be 600 episodes deep with so many of you wanting to be on the show and sponsoring us. Bottom of our heart deeply, we want to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Peter. Fun. Another fun episode with you. What's your ah, moment on Grocery Lab?
- [37:53]
C
Yeah, Grocery Lab is not built to be another rubber chicken dinner networking event where you bring your spouse and you, you know, you press the flesh. This is about coming with an activation mindset. You were, you are by its nature required to participate and they're not just leaving you with a PDF. It's a plan of action and it will be touch points that will help guide you on how to activate this after you leave the theater. This is a real deal eventually. That's my takeaway.
- [38:26]
D
My big one is pretty straightforward. Peter. I think Doug has already mentioned working with Think Blue on it. Where ahead of us in the game was after having offended year over year, you know, an average of seven to eight conferences a year. On the low side, we talked about keynotes, presentations, the lack of playbooks to take away, you know, being left in conference large ballrooms to figure out the technologies that you want to adopt or the service providers you want to start working with by yourself with no support whatsoever, no follow up whatsoever. None of these conferences have a life after the actual conference. I don't want to name them. You know them, you go to many of them that I do. So having an experiential event with a playbook to take away and a direct connection to the service provider is incredible. And I'll take for granted that as a result there'll be a limited choice of service providers instead of putting two 2,000 of them in a ballroom. So I can't wait to be there. Doug this sounds like an absolute must have done an event for anyone serious about the future of grocery or let's just say operating grocery today. Thank you for joining us on the podcast sharing your vision for Grocery Lab to our listeners. You can learn more and register for grocery lab happening June 2nd to 4th, 2026 by simply visiting fmi.org grocery lab or on Google simply search fmi space grocery lab Doug, it was a pleasure to have you man. It was great to have you on the show.
- [39:50]
A
Well, I appreciate you guys having me. Thank you Sree, personally for the extra work you're doing on Grocery Lab. Peter and Sree, I look forward to having you guys both there as well. I got a spot for you picked out right next to the stage so you can do as many podcasts from there you want.
- [40:05]
D
Can't wait for that moment. So I want to thank our audience for tuning into another episode of the CPG Guys. Follow us on Apple Spotify, your favorite platform, and we will catch you next time.
- [40:28]
B
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