FMI - OMEGA - West Virginia Oil Marketers & Grocers Association

Come with me on a journey through a time machine to consider the attributes that attract customers to a particular grocery store. When FMI first explored this topic in the 1982 Trends research, at that time called Trends: Consumer Attitudes and the Supermarket, we asked consumers to contribute, “the two or three most important services your supermarket can provide.” The nine out of 12 top store attributes shoppers volunteered as very important in 1982 appear on the top 12 most important list for 2019.

The Food Marketing Institute on behalf of the food retail industry did just that by achieving a landmark U.S. Supreme Court victory (6-3) in its fight to protect retailer and shopper privacy. As FMI’s counsel stated soon after the Court issued its opinion, “This case reversed decades of circuit opinions, which doesn't happen often. FMI is now a part of history."

The Community Outreach Awards have become one of the most anticipated and fun annual recognitions at FMI. Each year, I find my colleagues and I are inspired by food retailers’ innovative acts of kindness, so much so, that we find ourselves sharing these stories among our friends and families.

For National Family Meals Month™ (NFMM) 2018, Gold Plate Award-winner Wakefern Food Corp. encouraged family meals throughout their entire company. Natalie Menza-Crowe, director of health and wellness at Wakefern Food Corp., shared insights about their NFMM program.

Let’s go to a place my husband would consider very scary—the inner workings of my mind and how I make a decision about when, where and how I shop for grocery items for my family. I’m suggesting we take this journey together because of an interesting finding in the 2019 U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends report—the beginning of a plateau in the reach of online grocery shopping in part due to a flat-trend from Millennials.