Greetings all! Well, the summer is over and I hope you all had an enjoyable time of it with family, friends and loved ones. Time to start considering getting out the warmer clothes and let’s finish up the year successfully.
The National Supermarket Association (NSA) held its two-day International Trade Show at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale, Long Island. This year’s edition was co-hosted with Porky Products to help attract even more exhibitors and independent store owners and boy did it deliver! Kudos go out to the NSA for continuing to grow this event year after year. The infusion of some of the younger board members at the NSA has worked very well with the OG members and it is really showing. The extravaganza started out the evening before the show with a grand opening ceremony featuring Jim Perdue of Perdue Farms as the keynote speaker and an industry panel consisting of Donna Zambo of Allegiance Retail Services, Russ Whitman of Urner Barry, Jenny Jorge of Gala Foods, Luis Saenz of Goya Foods and Erica Grundish of Frito Lay which was moderated by Carlos Hernandez of the NSA Florida Chapter.
There were big crowds of attendees waiting to enter the show for day one and estimates for the two days of the show were that 5,000 food industry personnel attended. Seminars were offered throughout the two days to help independent operators build their businesses. Overall, it was a terrific event and I’m sure it will continue to grow. Great job by all involved!
The next big event for the NSA is its annual gala on November 4 at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut. The gala will be honoring Eddy Vargas of Pioneer Supermarkets as the 2023 Member of the Year and Pan American Grain and Jose Gonzalez as the Company of the Year.
Congratulations to Steve Oswald, vice president of quality assurance at Wakefern on being recognized as Person of the Year by the New Jersey Weights and Measures Association. The honor occurred at the group’s 11th Annual conference held in Atlantic City. Steve was cited as a trailblazer for his efforts to expand electronic shelf tags for unit pricing and his efforts to facilitate a commonsense approach to consumer affairs regulations. Well done, Steve!
Good work by Baldor Specialty Foods as it has earned the 2023 Great Place to Work certification on their first attempt. Great Place to Work is a globally recognized authority measuring the level of trust in an organization and the consistency of the employee experience, which is proven to increase innovation and employee retention. Baldor is one of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic’s largest produce and specialty foods distributors.
“I’m thrilled to learn through the survey that our employees across the board enjoy working here. We want to make Baldor a positive and fun workplace that contributes to their satisfaction and growth,” said CEO TJ Murphy. “We have worked hard to create an environment that gives people opportunities to earn more through performance bonuses and profit sharing while also supporting families with extremely low-cost benefits. I believe that the greatest investment we can make is in our people. We are always looking to make this a better company for our employees, vendors, and customers, and this validates what we are doing while giving us some opportunities–we’ll never stop trying to improve.” The certification was earned after an independent review of an employee opinion survey distributed to more than 2,500 Baldor employees throughout their facilities located in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. A significant majority of survey respondents agreed that Baldor was “a great place to work” citing pride, workplace camaraderie and fairness as the company’s top strengths. “While we are incredibly proud to have earned this certification, the survey has also given us some invaluable insights as to the areas for improvement,” said Catherine Jones, senior vice president of human resources. “Now that we have all this feedback from our employees, it’s really important that we show that we have heard what people think and put the right action plans in place to make Baldor an even better place to work.” Congrats to Baldor.
September is Hunger Action Month and we still have a couple of more weeks left to get behind it. We heard from Island Harvest on Long Island and they wanted to spread the awareness and urge everyone to take action to end hunger in America. Hunger Action Month is a month-long nationwide campaign designed to inspire people to take action and raise awareness about hunger in our communities. The fall months bring the stress of added costs for school supplies, holiday celebrations and cooler weather.
Our voices, actions, and commitment help ensure every community has the food they need to thrive. Because when people are fed, futures are nourished. Hunger Action Day is September 15 when collective efforts across the country are focused for greater impact. On that day everyone is encouraged to wear the color orange in support of the mission. As Island Harvest states, “Every action, big or small, is one step closer to help ending hunger.” Contact your local food bank to see how you or your organization can help.
Big news out of Acosta Sales & Marketing as all around good guy Stan Barrasso has been named executive vice president at the big national broker. Stan was most recently the senior vice president of the Northeast Hub and will now take on the added responsibilities of the Carolinas down to Florida and will have full responsibility for the entire East Coast. After starting his journey in the food bidness with Hillshire Farm in the early 90s, Stan quickly ascended the ranks and after a period of successes, rather than accepting promotions to other areas of the country in the CPG world, he decided to join a broker and stay in the Northeast. The broker was the former MAI company which was acquired by Acosta in 1999. I’m sure Stan will continue to shine in his new role thanks to his outstanding leadership skills. Congrats, Stan, on the well-deserved recognition.
That’s all for now folks. Feel free to contact me if you have any news or happenings going on and hopefully I will see you out in the trade at one of the many upcoming events. You can reach me at [email protected] or 201.250.2217.