Canadian Grand Prix New Product Awards Finalist Bonus episode: Meet Mary Peluso, Director, Private Label Grocery, Sobeys

Welcome to a special bonus episode celebrating the 29th ANNUAL CANADIAN GRAND PRIX NEW PRODUCT AWARDS

Sylvain and I are thrilled to be a sponsor of these prestigious awards for the third year in a row and have the chance to hand out the hardware on the stage to the winners in person for the first time!

We had the opportunity to meet and get to know many fantastic food innovators and entrepreneurs, creators and makers - from consumer brands to private retail labels.   These are their stories.

In this episode, meet  Mary Peluso, Director, Private Label Grocery, Sobeys

Thanks for joining us on this special bonus episode of The Food Professor. Stay tuned for plenty of great interviews of the finalists from the Retail Council of Canada's Canadian Grand Prix New Product Awards. And stay tuned for our regular full-length episodes available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google - wherever you enjoy your podcasts today.  

About Mary

A highly motivated, energetic individual with an extensive background in buying, planning and omni merchandising. I have led successful teams in both the retail and wholesale markets. My diverse background has given me commodity experience in all industries including : health and beauty, grocery and hardlines.

About Us

Dr. Sylvain Charlebois

 

Dr. 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.

 

Michael LeBlanc  is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice.   He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience, and has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career.  Michael is the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts including Canada’s top retail industry podcast,       The Voice of Retail, plus  Global E-Commerce Tech Talks  ,      The Food Professor  with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois and now in its second season, Conversations with CommerceNext!  You can learn more about Michael   here  or on     LinkedIn.

 

Be sure and check out Michael's latest adventure for fun and influencer riches - Last Request Barbecue,  his YouTube BBQ co