Walter Robb & S2G’s Audre Kapacinskas on the Future of Food Retail [Video]

This past December, we partnered with S2G Ventures and gathered over 370 entrepreneurs, executives, investors and industry professionals for an interactive discussion exploring the future of food retail with Walter Robb, former co-CEO of Whole Foods Market and Audre Kapacinskas, VP of S2G Ventures. The conversation explored how retailers might leverage cutting edge technologies and stakeholder-focused business models to build a 21st century food system.

Some of the key topics we discussed:

• What they learned in 2020 that transformed the way they think about food retail.
• If they were to start over, how they would design a 21st century grocery store to better serves all stakeholders.
• Overview of S2G Ventures’ thesis on content, commerce and community shape the future of retail over the next 5 years, and the most promising areas for investment.
• How automation, robotics, omni-channel and smart fulfillment will impact retail, as well as how retailers should be thinking about technology adoption.
• New opportunities that might be unlocked across the value chain by tapping into increased e-commerce data about people’s shopping behaviors and preferences.
• What leading with heart means for the food industry.

We also explored some great questions from the community, including:

• John Foraker, CEO of Once Upon a Farm: How do you see conflict between every store becoming an online distribution center and consumer desire for retailer theater and in-store experience playing out?
• Peter Droste, Independent Experience Designer: What do you do specifically to practice and cultivate your agility and curiosity?
• Mike Hotz, Business Developer of Carma Chocolates at Barry Callebaut: What chances do you see for small producers in micro fulfillment solutions bypassing traditional retail?
• Mike Lee, Co-CEO of Alpha Food Labs: Where do we find the sweet spot in our food system between large, consolidated production models and smaller, more decentralized production models?
• Harry Rhodes, Executive Director of Food Animal Concerns: How can farmers get their fair share by selling through retail? How can we make it worth it for them to work with retailers?
• Andrew Mayne, Senior Associate Director of Culinary Arts at Stanford University: Do you think the retail companies of the future need to have a different ownership structure, a move towards community based ownership or co-op based ownership?

Join us For the Reimagining Food Retail Conversation Series

This was the first in our new Reimagining Food Retail Conversations, a series of discussions exploring how this unprecedented moment in time will shape food retail over the next five years that we’re co-hosting with S2G Ventures. Our goal is to create a space for stakeholders from farm to fork to come together to discuss how we might fundamentally reimagine food retail to make it more resilient, equitable, accessible, diverse, delicious, healthful and climate-smart.

Join us for the rest of the series from January 21 – February 18 where we will be exploring how we might reimagine grocery for discovery, resilience and to better serve all stakeholders. For our conversation on January 21, we will be joined by Vanessa Pham, co-Founder of Omsom, Jeremiah McElwee, chief merchandising officer at Thrive Market, and Katie Marston, chief marketing officer at Once Upon a Farm, and Tonya Bakritzes, SVP of marketing at S2G Ventures, to explore the various new approaches retailers and emerging brands are taking for customer acquisition and discovery.

You will also be able to participate in ongoing conversation with the community through our slack group. RSVP for Reimagining Food Retail today!

Bonus: What People Are Reading to Self Educate Themselves

There was a great discussion in the chat about what people are reading right now to self educate themselves. Here are some of the books and articles mentioned:

• S2G’s The Future of Food: Through The Lens of Retail Report
• Audre’s Blog Post: S2G Ventures on the Future of Food Retail
• Conscious Leadership, by John Mackey
• On Food and Cooking – The Science and Lore of The Kitchen, By Harold McGee
• Let My People Go Surfing, by Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia
• We Fed an Island by Jose Andres
• The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success, by Albert-László Barabási (read community member Allison Geller’s summary)
• Salesforce acquires Slack, DeepMind’s AlphaFold breakthrough, Trust Fund Socialists & more
• Know when to fold ’em: How a company best known for playing games used A.I. to solve one of biology’s greatest mysteries