Welcome to the The Food Professor, episode No. 4 - I’m Michael LeBlanc along with Sylvain Charlebois!Hot potatoe issue: Stats. Can reports some pretty startling numbers for increases cost of some products - what's going on here?Carrots, 29%Macaroni, 19%Potatoes, 16%Canned soup, 15%Canned tomatoes, 11%."You say new NAFTA I say CUSMA,  crying over spilled milk, impacts on the dairy and other sectors of the new agreement coming into force July 1, 2020Totally Baked Idea: from illicit to essential for retail cannabis - has the Zamboni era of recreational cannabis really begun?  April saw month/month slight drop, but year over year, wow dude lots of growth!Sizing up the increased COVID operating costs: Maple Leaf says its $20 million:  See https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-maple-leaf-foods-says-coronavirus-costs-will-add-up-to-20-million-to/And Voila - Sobeys  gets in the eCommerce game with a huge investment with OCADOCheck out the Saputo fridge, DTC for consumers in Quebec: https://lefrigosaputo.ca/Food Fraud on the rise - another gift of COVID-19?Very first special  Guest: David Marcott, SVP Cross-Industry/Cross-Border and Technology at Kantar Consulting joins us to talk retail tech innovation and balance sheet strategies of the big grocers preparing for the COVId-19 era https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmarcotte/If you liked what you heard you can subscribe on Apple iTunes , Spotify or your favourite podcast platform, please rate and review, and be sure and recommend to a friend or colleague in the grocery, foodservice,  or restaurant industry.    I’m Michael LeBlanc, producer and host of The Voice of Retail podcast and a bunch of other stuff, and I’m Sylvain Charlebois,Stay Safe everyone!!
About UsDr. Sylvain Charlebois is a Professor in food distribution and policy in the Faculties of Management and Agriculture at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He is also the Senior Director of the Agri-food Analytics Lab, also located at Dalhousie University. Before joining Dalhousie, he was affiliated with the University of Guelph’s Arrell Food Institute, which he co-founded. Known as “The Food Professor”, his current research interest lies in the broad area of food distribution, security and safety. Google Scholar ranks him as one of the world's most cited scholars in food supply chain management, food value chains and traceability.He has authored five books on global food systems, his most recent one published in 2017 by Wiley-Blackwell entitled “Food Safety, Risk Intelligence and Benchmarking”. He has also published over 500 peer-reviewed journal articles in several academic publications. Furthermore, his research has been featured in several newspapers and media groups, including The Lancet, The Economist, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BBC, NBC, ABC, Fox News, Foreign Affairs, the Globe & Mail, the National Post and the Toronto Star.Dr. Charlebois sits on a few company boards, and supports many organizations as a special advisor, including some publicly traded companies. Charlebois is also a member of the Scientific Council of the Business Scientific Institute, based in Luxemburg. Dr. Charlebois is a member of the Global Food Traceability Centre’s Advisory Board based in Washington DC, and a member of the National Scientific Committee of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) in Ottawa.About MichaelMichael is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc. and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada and the Bank of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience with Levi's, Black & Decker, Hudson's Bay, Today's Shopping Choice and Pandora Jewellery.Michael has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. He has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions with C-level executives and participated worldwide in thought leadership panels. ReT