Mike Beveridge of FreshDirect on the Future Food Show
Mike is a Senior Associate Merchant at FreshDirect, a New-York based online grocer. He joined FreshDirect in 2019 to work in their express, one-hour delivery service, improving the supply chain, buying and merchandising for Meat, Poultry, and Seafood. He took over the Meat and Poultry sourcing and supply chain at FreshDirect in April 2020, right at the start of the COVID pandemic, and spends most of his time on FreshDirect’s four whole-animal programs — Grass Fed Beef, Antibiotic-Free Angus Beef, Pasture-Raised Pork, and Pasture-Raised Lamb.
Mike graduated from Cornell University in the winter of 2016, where he studied Food Industry Management and Environmental Science. Prior to FreshDirect, he worked for Smithfield Foods, where he worked for their Walmart sales team, as well on the Foodservice Marketing team.
This episode is sponsored by the Black & Veatch NextGen Ag Team. Learn more about Black and Veatch at www.bv.com.
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Alex: (00:04)
Thanks for joining us on the Cultured Meat and Future Food Show. This episode is sponsored by the Black & Veatch NextGen Ag team. Learn more about Black & Veatch at www.bv.com. We’re excited to have Mike Bevridge of FreshDirect on this episode. Mike is a senior associate merchant at FreshDirect, a New York based online grocer. He joined FreshDirect in 2019 to work on their express one-hour delivery service, improving the supply chain, buying and merchandising for meat, poultry, and seafood. He took over the meat and poultry sourcing and supply chain at FreshDirect in April of 2020, right at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. And he spends most of his time on FreshDirect’s four whole animal programs grass-fed beef, antibiotic free Angus beef, pasture-raised pork and pasture-raised lamb. Mike graduated from Cornell University in the winter of 2016, where he studied food industry management and environmental science. Prior to FreshDirect, he worked with Smithfield Foods where he worked with their Walmart sales teams, as well as food service marketing team. Let’s jump right in. Thanks for joining us on the Future Food Show. On today’s episode, we’re excited to have Mike Bevridge from FreshDirect. Mike, I’d like to welcome you to the Future Food Show.
Mike: (01:20)
Hey, thanks so much, Alex, for having me. It’s great to be here.
Alex: (01:23)
Tell us about your background and when you started your journey into the food industry.
Mike: (01:28)
Yeah, definitely. So I graduated from Cornell in the winter of 2016 and when I started out, I was actually in environmental science. I was really passionate about the sciences and sustainability, you know, and specifically, how do I make an impact with some of our world’s biggest challenges and largely looking at climate change. As I got through school, I realized that the sciences weren’t my speed, but I found that food was really a way to combine my general passion for good food and eating and different kinds of cuisines with a way to actually make an impact on our environment and drive some positive changes there. Out of school, after concentrating in marketing and food industry management, I started my career out at Smithfield. So as you and many of your listeners, I’m sure know Smithfield is the world’s largest pork producer. So I really wanted to learn what the industrial system was like, because I didn’t come from an agricultural background growing up. When I was there, I spent time with their sales teams and their marketing teams, which was a really great experience and they’re really good at what they do, which is great for our learning environment. Back in 2019, I made the switch out to FreshDirect where I still am now. I started off on the express delivery business in meat, seafood, and poultry. And then basically in March, late March, early April of last year, I took over all of the sourcing basically for the meat and poultry categories at FreshDirect. Starting in the middle of a pandemic was definitely a challenge, but a lot of fun in hindsight, very brief career, but I’ve definitely touched on a lot of different facets, which has been super interesting to learn across entire country.
Alex: (03:00)
Could you give us a kind of explain it like I’m five answer of what sourcing means in this context?
Mike: (03:07)
Yeah, definitely. So what we pride ourselves on, in FreshDirect is having a shorter supply chain. So really going straight from the farm to our warehouse, to your door. So in the context of meat and poultry, what that means is I spend a lot of my time working across our entire value chain. So I’m connected with our farmers, I’m connected with our processors, working at different cattle head counts and hog numbers and what we’re doing with our lamb and then carrying that through the entire value chain. So submitting all of our breaks to the processors and then getting freight, making sure it comes in the door and managing the costing and the pricing and availability and balancing the carcass along the whole leg so that it gets to the customer and the way that they want and also is profitable and well-balanced, and runs through our production rooms as well. So it’s a high-level role, but what’s fascinating is I get to touch on all parts of our value chain, which is super challenging at times, but it pulls me in a lot of different directions and there’s just a lot of fun.
Alex: (04:03)
Great. And I think the word fresh is really there for a meaning if you guys are handling each of these steps in the process.
Mike: (04:10)
Yeah. So we generally say that our food is anywhere from three to seven days fresher on average in the industry. So if you think about, if you go to your standard brick and mortar grocer, or the pack of berries or lettuce, for example, it is out in the field it’s picked, it’s washed, it’s bagged. It goes to one, maybe two, distributors. And then it gets to the parent company where it usually goes to a distribution center. And from there it’s shipped out to regionally, right to the different stores from that regional distribution center. For us, again, it’s on those same, you know, example blueberries or lettuces. It is picked, it goes to the airport. It is flown out. We pick it up at LaGuardia, it comes to our warehouse and then it goes straight back out. One of the things that was really interesting to learn is for fish, for example, you can literally order the product before the fish has even caught out of the water and it shows up at your door fresh and hand-cut. So it’s really a tight supply chain and that helps us bring high quality food that tastes better, but is also fresher and we get the cost benefits from having fewer people touch it at every step of the way.
Alex: (05:12)
Wow that’s a really exciting thought and I’m excited to connect that back into future foods in just a second, but can you tell us from a consumer standpoint, what is the FreshDirect model and maybe those who are not familiar with FreshDirect, what is that consumer experience like ordering and receiving goods?
Mike: (05:31)
Yeah, definitely. So FreshDirect is a first party delivery service. And when I say first party, a lot of what people know when they think grocery delivery Instacart is the big name and that’s a third party service, right? So when you go to Instacart, you say, I want Whole Foods or Stop & Shop or Trader Joe’s or Kroger. And then one of their associates goes out, picks your order and brings it back as a first party grocer, we buy warehouse inventory and deliver all our own groceries, including our own private label brands. So we have a website and an app we serve basically the 95 corridors: Washington D.C., all the way up to Fairfield County, Connecticut. You place an order on our website up to seven days in advance and as short as one hour, in select parts of the city, and you can get a full shop our whole time as the name suggests we’ve been focused on fresh and we’ve been focused on fresh for 20 years in grocery delivery. So it’s a full grocery shop. So you can get everything from Bounty paper towels to strip steaks, to berries, wine beer, and then it delivers to your door in the window that you want. So it’s really a full service experience. And we’ve definitely seen a big uptake in the pandemic as well as many other e-commerce grocers have.
Alex: (06:45)
And New York city is where the company started. Is New York city the biggest market right now?
Mike: (06:52)
Yeah, we were founded in New York about 20 years ago. So we’re a legacy of the .com bubble and certainly the five boroughs and the tri-state area. So you figure the commuter zone into New York is our bread and butter. So that’s Westchester, that’s just across the border in Jersey, Long Island, and then again, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx.
Alex: (07:12)
We talked about how there are other players in the space such as Instacart as a third party delivery service. In other ways, how has grocery delivery changed over the years, either for FreshDirect or maybe for just the space in general?
Mike: (07:27)
Yeah. Great question. And taking a step back and widen it out as grocery commerce on the whole, because you know, a lot of the numbers that you’re seeing for grocery e-commerce growth over the pandemic refers to all the different avenues for buying groceries online that’s delivery like FreshDirect, Amazon, what they’re doing like Instacart, but a lot of where grocery e-commerce is growing is, and delivery is growing as well, don’t get me wrong, but a bigger part is with click and collect. So you sell Walmart has made really big investments in there and Wegmans and Kroger and all these really big chains we’ve gone over the past. I think even into 2010, when buying something on your phone was weird and you know, that’s the start of social gaming and everything like that. And in app purchases really over the past 10 years, we’ve seen this huge, massive adoption of people being more and more comfortable buying things online. The biggest challenge for a long time was how do you get people comfortable with fresh food? The pandemic has forced people to get over that hump a little bit faster and where we’ve been able to succeed really well is just carrying that trust of saying, look, you don’t have to worry about your berries. Like we’re going to make sure that they’re good. We rate all of our produce. We rate all of our seafood, which is very atypical. We’re basically telling people like what’s great right now and what you shouldn’t buy unless you really want it. So we do a lot to curry trust with our customers so that they feel safe and know that we are going to be able to give them the same high quality experience, time and time again.
Alex: (08:51)
And the click and collect model is when you order online and then you drive to a store to pick it up?
Mike: (08:56)
Yep. That’s exactly right. So you go online, you pick your pickup window usually, and then an associate in the store will go pick your order. And it’s usually in a tote or some kind of bag. And I think, especially with contactless delivery, now it’s usually goes straight in your trunk, but that’s been a big driver for a lot of grocers who don’t have their own fleet of delivery or who want to get around the fees of third-party services. Or if they’re just an incredibly rural area, like a lot of Walmarts are where delivery would just be prohibitively expensive because of the distance you’d have to drive.
Alex: (09:28)
And would you say the folks that maybe were not purchasing online from FreshDirect might try click and collect and then open up to services FreshDirect?
Mike: (09:38)
Yeah, that’s a really good question. I think it’s certainly an onboarding ramp. I think the bigger barrier to delivery, right? If you’re choosing between the two, I think someone who is inclined to shop online if delivery is an option, they’re more of that kind of shopper, right? Like they feel more comfortable. They know what they want. They feel like they’re going to get what they’re expecting. I think the biggest problem for mass adoption of delivery is you need a density of population, right? We serve pretty densely populated areas, which is great, but a lot of America isn’t really served by delivery because again, it’s less dense or in a lot of cities in the Midwest are built more for driving. So they sprawl and sprawl, which can just be hard to make delivery work logistically. I think certainly it’s a way to onboard if you get comfortable and you can check your groceries right there while you’re at the store. But I think it’s more like an e-commerce shopper is more attitudinally inclined to shop online. Does that makes sense?
Alex: (10:30)
Absolutely. And so you have a background in meat and poultry and you’re working in the meat, poultry and seafood right now as plant-based meat alternatives have come into the market. What have you noticed?
Mike: (10:43)
That’s a great question. And I think obviously Beyond and Impossible are all the rage right now. So if you look at kind of the first wave of plant-based burgers of the Morning Star Farms and the Dr Praeger and everything like that, they’re mostly designed for vegetarians, like they’re tasty higher protein options that you can also stick on a grill if you don’t want to eat meat. And those are really great. What we’re seeing now actually is these alt meat or plant-based meats, however you want to refer to them, that are actually becoming taste competitive with meat itself and really trying to draw meat buyers. And that’s been probably the most pronounced shift from a consumer insights perspective over the past couple of years. And the next big hurdle really is cost competitiveness, which Impossible Foods has recently announced a cost reduction. So we should see that spreading out to stores. So that’s really been the biggest thing here is that this wave of plant-based foods isn’t so much, Hey, here’s this veggie option is, Hey, you carnivore or omnivore, why don’t you try something that’s plant-based and it’s really fascinating to see how customers are responding to that. And the data’s not quite out yet totally with the pandemic it’s muddied so much, but I’d love to better understand. And I think we’ll see over the coming probably eight months, what that reorder rate is, and as cost competitiveness and taste gets even closer and even closer, how do people continue to respond to that? The high level thing, which we’ll see, continue to bear out is how does society continue to define what’s “healthy”. So if you’re going to make an investment in a better for you, I’ll use meat as an encompassing product, is it better to have a grass-fed burger where the one ingredient is beef and maybe salt and pepper, or do you have a plant-based burger, which may have all these highly processed, potentially genetically modified ingredients. I’m very curious to see how that shakes out. And I think only time will tell if it definition of healthy is constantly changing. So it will be fascinating to watch how that bears out.
Alex: (12:35)
And when we are thinking about the companies that are working in traditional meat and poultry, have you seen that they are also working or trying to develop alternative proteins as well? Have you seen anything like that from landscape you’re looking at?
Mike: (12:53)
Yeah, definitely. I think pretty much every player in the space is working on plant-based alternatives. Tyson has a venture arm that’s invested in a few different areas. Smithfield under their Pure Farmlands line has some plant-based sausage patties I believe. I know Cargill is looking at JBS as well, so pretty much every big player. And it makes a lot of sense too, because companies like Cargill have big footprints in the grain markets and the base for a lot of these alt meats are usually textured soy proteins in some way, unless you start looking at fermented, but generally these are like textured soy or other grains. So it actually is a really natural adjacent business for a lot of them because they have the cost advantages in there, but it’s going to be a pretty crowded space here soon and Beyond and Impossible definitely have the brand recognition, but certainly it seems every day, there are more and more brands coming out from players big and small.
Alex: (13:46)
When it comes to sustainability, we have been hearing that chicken is a lot more sustainable than beef, for example. Have you seen any kind of changes in consumer buying patterns based off of, for example, an increase in chicken over beef because of sustainability reasons?
Mike: (14:06)
That’s a tough question. I think we could probably have a podcast just on this question alone. So there’s a lot to unpack there. If you look at the high level trend, chicken is the most consumed animal protein in the US part of that might be sustainability, but I think a bigger part of that is cost. And then really since about the 1950s, 1960s America on the whole has been on a push to eat like our national diet and what the USDA puts out is to eat less fat and chicken is the easiest way to do that. Chicken breasts and thighs are very lean. That’s probably been the biggest driver in what drives chicken. In terms of sustainability concerns, this is such a difficult question because a lot of it depends on how you’re counting carbon emissions. And then if you look up and down the whole supply chain, like what does that actually look like? And for example, the Midwest is super fertile. The reason why it’s hard to say definitively, but what most ecologists suspect, the reason why that was so fertile is because over time, herds and herds of ruminants chased over the plains, they eat the grass and they pass those nutrients back into the soil and they moved on ruminants like cattle and sheep are a very important part of every ecosystem. That’s a core tenant of what we’re seeing a lot of the regenerative agriculture movement. So if you have grass-fed beef from a truly pastured farm practicing regenerative practices it’s really hard to say that’s not sustainable. And chicken play a big role there where it gets really muddy is if you look in just the industrial meat production system, chicken would be the most sustainable protein because they have the shortest lifespan. So they live the least amount of time usually about, I think it’s about eight weeks is what the industrial broiler chicken lives. It’s really hard. There’s a lot of different dimensions on that. It depends on the food system that you’re looking at. And I think regenerative agriculture as more and more people do more studies there and we better quantify carbon emissions. I think we’re going to start to see that calculus in conversation shifting a little bit.
Alex: (15:58)
Great answer. And I think you’re right. That was a very nice snippet of where the thought process comes from. I want to shift gears and talk about startups, especially startups that are working on new food products in the CPG space and how they actually enter the grocery space. So I have a couple of follow-ups on that, but maybe first, if let’s say I have a food product that is ready to go into grocery, what would be the best way to make it part of the FreshDirect offering?
Mike: (16:29)
Yeah. Great question. I will just assume that you have all of your legal requirements done. So you’re in a commercial kitchen or a contract manufacturer. You have your nutrition labeling everything else. There’s really a few key areas and I’ll keep this more specific to FreshDirect because brick and mortar can be a little bit different, which we can touch on after this. The first one is you really want to have a clear value propositions. This goes back to the classic red ocean, blue ocean strategies, if you’re in a crowded space. So if you have another sausage that you want, or if you’re another oatmilk or anything like that, does your product taste good? And why is it different or is yours non-GMO or using ancient grains? Is it, this is it that having that story and why it matters to customers is going to be really important. And if it’s something way out of left field, you think you’re really entering a space where there aren’t other offerings because people don’t even know that they want this yet and make sure you have that story. I think the other thing, obviously, and this is hard to tell, but try to understand your costing. You know, if your product would cost $10 for us to buy, but everything similar sells for $10. So obviously there’s a disconnect there because product comes in our door, we have to Mark it up and then sell it to make our margins. You know, if your cost is the same as our retails, then there’s going to be a little bit of a mismatch there, not to say it’s impossible, but you know, again, have the why down. And I think the last thing really timing and seasonality, and what I mean by that is you’re not going to sell in a new Valentine’s chocolate on February 13th or a new hot dog on July 3rd. Grocers have different timings for category reviews. And when they’re placing all their buys, so working well ahead of the seasonality is going to be really key. You are going to have your burgers done before the summer. You’re going to have your turkeys placed way before November, everything like that. So it’s really a combination of everything. FreshDirect is really unique in that because all of our orders are filled from one large warehouse. We have the chance to really incubate small brands and we get all of our data back in real time, which is a treat. A lot of groceries don’t have that luxury. So we do incubate a lot of small brands. Again, certainly any new product has to have a value proposition and it has to fit into our ethos.
Alex: (18:36)
Interesting. And when we do think of that traditional model and assuming safety labeling, etc. is already finalized, oftentimes we take that to a co-manufacturer or a co-packer, then distributor, and then eventually retail. In the FreshDirect model, the distributor and retail are joined into one. Is that right?
Mike: (18:55)
Yes. So we still do buy from distribution, right? And it’s not like we buy everything direct, for example, to buy Bounty paper towels direct from Procter & Gamble, you’d have to buy trailers and trailers load, which is just more product than we can move. So certainly we do buy things from distribution, but going back to that earlier conversation about our shorter supply chain, we only have one warehouse that we pack orders from to deliver, you know, in a brick and mortar it might be, if you sell into a Walmart, you’re selling into a regional section, right. And your product will go to one of their big distribution centers where it’s then packed out into separate smaller Walmart trucks, where it runs out to the different stores. Does that make sense?
Alex: (19:36)
Absolutely. Yeah. On a note of what you said about data, that’s very exciting that being a tech company really you do manage data a lot better than some of these retail stores also because of your model. So that leads to my next question of what are some examples of new product categories that have come to the market that you have witnessed and how do they do? And originally I was thinking maybe Soylent or Beyond Meat as examples, but maybe a better example might be EPIC, I guess it’s like between beef jerky and snack bars, for example.
Mike: (20:09)
It is such a huge advantage for us to be able to see all of our data. It lets us pounce specifically in the meat and poultry world and seafood, really anything with short shelf, life, high turn items. It lets us make much more accurate buys. So our scrap is way lower as well. So that helps a lot from a sustainability angle. In terms of new products, yeah, it’s really interesting. So the EPIC bar, I’m actually not as familiar with the launch here of that at FreshDirect. One that I remember very vividly was oat milk in the start of 2019. It was like impossible to source. But when you see a new product come in, it starts as almost an S-curve, right? So you have a product that, you know, it’s low sales, low growth, right? People are spreading word of mouth selling at farmer’s markets, whatever it might be. And then it really rapidly enters this high sales high growth where you’re bringing pallets in and they’re going out the door as fast as possible. After a while of that, usually the sales will plateau and then settle down to whatever their normal demand is because some people may try it once and realize, Hey, oat milk it’s not my thing, I’m going back to regular milk or soy milk or whatever it may be. And then it settles into kind of a, an elevated plateau. Everything’s a little different. So if you look at things that are flagged as like keto or paleo or whole 30, and usually you see a big spike on that January 1st and usually health diet things will bottom out somewhere in like October, November, as people get into the holidays and the diets are really gone. So there’s all sorts of different patterns, but most new products that have a lot of hype will follow that same curve where you start small and you hit an exponential growth it’ll plateau. And then after X amount of time, it falls back off to whatever the base demand actually is. And that’s when you start to really find out who your customer is because you’re seeing repeat data, you’re understanding how they’re shopping. When are they filling up things like that.
Alex: (21:58)
Does FreshDirect create any of their own products based off of data. Can you speak to that?
Mike: (22:04)
Yeah. We certainly have private label product, like any grocer and private label is almost always higher margin and we can control the quality specs. We can control the quality everywhere, but if you’re talking to Organic Valley, like they’re doing what Organic Valley does. If we do a private label, we set the standards where you control all the ingredients, things like that. So we certainly do private label things. Every category treats that a little bit differently, like in the meat category, because we have all of our programming that we’re really proud of in a very strong local supply chain. We try to do a lot more private label than branded, but certainly each category takes it differently. I think our grocery teams, they do an amazing job of finding a lot of like local and small brands and elevating them. We’ve been exclusive retail launch partners with people before. So every category takes it a little bit differently. Certainly we don’t try to jump the gun. You know, like most retailers, we do a lot of private label work and I think that’s going to continue to grow because it’s the way that you can provide the most value to the customer.
Alex: (23:06)
What are your thoughts on cultured meat? Once these products get the green light, do you think that retailers and grocers are keen on pushing these products and what kind of risks might be involved? And of course this is assuming they do get the green light and safety approvals from USDA, FDA. What other kinds of risks are of potential?
Mike: (23:26)
Definitely a great question. I think I’ll actually tackle this one kind of in reverse of how you asked it to me in my mind, when you think about case studies of what we’ve learned about regulation in technology and food, the biggest risk to me would be to try to usher these cultured meats in and sneak them by people. I think, regardless of your personal opinion on GMOs, and I’m not, I’m truly not making a statement on that in any direction. A lot of that uncertainty about GMOs comes through because a lot of products were brought in under generally recognized as safe, the grass certifications and people don’t want to disclose it and things like that. So the biggest opportunity to me for all these manufacturers is just to be really transparent about how these are made. Obviously regulatory clearances will either happen or they won’t. I anticipate with the framework that the FDA and USDA have lined up that there will be products approved, but, you know, especially in today’s day and age where literally the entire internet is in your pocket and people can search for anything that they want, they demand that they know where their food’s coming from. Is it healthy? Is it good for me? So I think companies have to be really proactive there because if we have the same backlash, like there is with GMOs, it’s going to be tough, I think. But in terms of how grocers and myself personally, I think, yeah, there is interest out here and as retailers and as people looking to feed the world, we try to anticipate demand. And then certainly when demand is there, we want to meet it. And I think, especially with us at FreshDirect, we’re constantly looking for more sustainable options. And how do we continue to make our food system a better system? Cultured meat has a space in there. And I was really excited to see the approvals out in Singapore and watching everything pretty closely. I think it’s a fascinating new front and it’s actually meat, which differentiates itself from a lot of these alt meats, whether they’re fermented or like we’ve talked about with the Impossible and the Beyond. So yeah, I’m excitedly watching it develop and I do think grocers will be jumping on this as soon as the fog of war lifts a little bit, right? Like there’s a little bit more clarity that needs to come out on what is this and how will it be manufactured? And I’ve never tasted it. I think a lot of buyers haven’t either it needs to taste close and perform almost as well or better. But yeah, I’m very excited about it as a technology,
Alex: (25:36)
Generally speaking, what are some changes we’ll see in the way we purchase food in the future?
Mike: (25:42)
The pandemic has obviously accelerated e-commerce adoption. So looking beyond just ordering food online, because where we are now is what most people predicted would happen in 2025, 2030 in terms of dollar share of e-commerce grocery. So beyond just saying, yeah, people order more online. If, for me as a pure thinker or dreamer, I’d love to see more. And I think this will happen. Not that I necessarily love to see, I think it’s going to happen is greater use of maybe augmented or virtual reality. You know, there are clothing startups who are working to measure your body. So you can get off the rack clothes with a tailored fit, translate that to food. Like what if you could order food and you pop on a pair of VR goggles and you’re controlling a drone or a robot in a warehouse, right? So you yourself are picking out your food that’s going to then be delivered to you. To me, that’s fascinating. And I’m sure there’s someone working on something like that, faster delivery. I think drones, obviously once the FAA really approves them, Amazon’s who’s on that front. If you don’t have to worry about getting stuck in traffic, you can deliver even faster. And then also when you look at big cities like New York, Chicago, London, drones give you an opportunity to utilize like rooftops and there’s a lot more vertical than horizontal space. So I think that’s really fascinating as well. And then when I think about other enhancements in the world of delivery, and this is coming, I think in the next two years, you’re going to see a lot more of this, but temperature controlled delivery boxes. My belief Walmart just announced a recent trial run with someone. But imagine if you could order your food, say, all right, deliver whenever, when I’m out of the office, when you come back up to 8, 10, 12 hours, whatever, after the delivery time, it’ll keep your groceries perfectly cold or at the right temperature, right? So maybe your bananas are in a separate compartment, so they don’t turn brown, but that would eliminate a huge pain point for delivery because that is a pain to have to sit and wait for your groceries to come up in a one hour or two hour window. So if there’s a way where you don’t have to worry about that, and I think that’d be huge. So technology and because people feel more comfortable buying online, I think we’re going to start seeing things much faster that people wouldn’t have thought would happen until the end of the decade or the 2030s. It’s a really exciting space right now.
Alex: (27:54)
Wow. Yeah. And just thinking about a very efficient and optimized drone delivery is a really exciting thing to think about.
Mike: (28:01)
Yeah. Seriously. One of the biggest problems that we have to deal with in routing orders is like, Oh, there was an accident. Or like X street is shut down because of this parade or whatever it may be. So imagine if you just didn’t have to worry about that. That’s huge. And you’re going as the Crow flies. So talk about faster delivery because that’s really the next frontier and delivery is it’s been proven that it can be done. So now it’s how do you get it done faster? And you’re seeing same day is not even the frontier anymore. It’s one-hour delivery. So drones is that make it half hour delivery? I don’t know, but it would be incredible because that’s really, when you start passing the speed threshold for walking to your Cornerstore or like driving to your nearest Whole Foods, if something can be delivered to your door in 30 minutes, that’s incredible.
Alex: (28:44)
You can get in touch with Mike on LinkedIn and learn more about FreshDirect at www.freshdirect.com. Mike, do you have any last insights for our audience today?
Mike: (28:56)
Yeah, I think the last thought that I’d want to just leave people with is, as we think about the future of food, is that there are real people in real communities that produce everything that’s on your grocery shelf or in your cupboard. And that’s one of the things that I appreciate most about FreshDirect is that we’re really focused on the farms and the brands and the people behind them. And I often think that’s something that’s left behind in the alt meat or cultured meat world is that there’s whole rural communities and ways of life that are not being talked about. So when you think about sustainability, it’s sustainability for the environment, but also for people in communities. And that’s just something that I’d love to see spoken about more in the sustainable and future food world. And I like to keep spreading this message, and I hope that I’ve been able to share that a little bit with your listeners today. So I just want to say thank you as well for having me on. It’s been a pleasure talking to you.
Alex: (29:42)
Mike, thanks so much for being with us today and sharing your insight on the Future Food Show. This is your host, Alex, and we look forward to being with you on our next episode.
This transcript was generated by an automated service. Special thanks to Anita Bröllochs for assisting with the transcription for this episode.
