Welcome to the Canadian Grand Prix New Product Awards bonus episode of The Food Professor!My co-host Sylvain Charlebois and I are thrilled to once again be supporting Retail Council of Canada’s new product awards this year as we both are big believers in supporting new and innovative products for the grocery shelves and beyond.   The private label portfolio at Metro is extensive and was a top contender in Retail Council of Canada’s Canadian Grand Prix New Products Awards this year, taking home the hardware in several food and other categories. In this special episode of The Food Professor podcast, we sit down with Marie-France Gibson and Paula Deane, the Vice President and Director of Metro’s corporate brands. Together, they illustrate the logistics and strategy behind managing such a vast brand portfolio - from team management to new product development. Don’t miss their key pieces of advice and insights on emerging consumer trends in the grocer space. ******Thanks for listening, and to see all the winners and their featuring products and learn more visit http://www.rccgrandprix.ca/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, stay tuned for our next episode with my partner Sylvain Charlebois!
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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. ReThink Retail has added Michael to their prestigious Top Global Retail Influencers list for 2024 for the fourth year in a row.Michael is also the president of Maven Media, producing a network of leading trad