The Future of grocery

Last night, I moderated a panel discussion at CIC Boston, and hosted by Branchfood, on the future of grocery and food retail. Our panel was stacked: Arthur Ackles, VP of Merchandising and Buying at New England grocery chain Roche Bros., David Stone, CEO & Founder at Forager;  Cheryl Cronin, CEO of Boston Public Market; and natural foods broker John Maggiore. Between these four individuals are decades and decades of experience in the food industry, entrepreneurship, and leadership, and the sold-out crowd benefitted greatly from their thoughts and predictions.

Here's Branchfood's live tweeting of the event, and below are a few highlights for me, in no particular order:

• Learning how Roche Bros. is responding to trends in healthy and local food in its stores, attempting to create a warm and inviting store experience, and stocking its new urban format Brothers Marketplaces with 100% regional products.
• Hearing Boston Public Market CEO Cheryl Cronin talk about the challenges the market has faced in its early years -- namely, turning producers into retailers -- and how the market association is helping work through those challenges. (also excited to try out the delivery service BPM is currently developing!)
• Absorbing David Stone's passion for helping Americans eat more fresh, local produce, and how he's using his Forager platform to simplify the food chain and shorten the distance between farms and retailers. 
• Some direct and friendly banter between Stone and Ackles over the successes and failures of the supermarket industry and what role it will play moving forward.
• Gleaning from John Maggiore's decade of work shepherding natural food startups to store shelves around New England and hearing his insights into how the many CPG founders in the room can get their products in front of consumers in this brave new world.
• Fantastic questions from the audience about everything from Market Basket to self-checkout robots.
• Trying some of the most exciting new food and beverage products coming out of Boston before and after the panel.

As you can tell, we had fun. Hopefully, there will be some video of the event soon and information about the next series of panel discussion. Speaking of which, what topics would you like to see Branchfood tackle in the next panel series?