ORLANDO, Fla. — The food distribution industry and its principal trade association, the Food Marketing Institute, need to make immediate and significant progress toward becoming more diverse.
That challenge was issued by Jeff Noddle at last week's FMI Midwinter Executive Conference here. Noddle is chairman and chief executive officer of Supervalu and is also FMI chairman.
“As an industry, we need to make tremendous progress on diversity and we need to start now. We are not going to see more women or people of color [at meetings such as FMI Midwinter] until we see those people rising throughout our companies and those of all of our trading partners as well.
“And I must say that our trading partners really have done an outstanding job, and a better job than we have on the retail and wholesale side of our industry. The FMI board is the place I see that has the most need. As we look around that group, we are clearly, clearly not as diverse on the retail and wholesale FMI board as we need to be. We are making progress, but we have a long way to go.”
Noddle also related the diversity issue to Supervalu. He specified that notwithstanding the fact that Supervalu received Supermarket News' “Champion of Diversity” award during the Midwinter event, “I will tell you, we are not diverse in our company. What we have done is put things in place to make us more diverse.” (SN profiled Supervalu's diversity efforts last week. Also see Page 20.)
Noddle said one reason FMI is changing its show format two years hence is to provide a forum to address industry issues, such as diversity and leadership skills needed for the industry's next generation. As has been reported in SN previously, current plans at FMI call for the staging of a booth show in Chicago this year, to be followed by another edition of the booth show in Las Vegas the following year. In 2009, a “world-class” educational forum is to be held in Dallas, with the booth show to resume in alternate years thereafter.
Noddle also acknowledged that another reason the long-running and once-vast Chicago show is slated for less-frequent exposure is that it now attracts little more than a quarter of FMI's membership on a regular basis.
“We believe an enhanced training program for the entire industry will help make significant headway,” he said.
