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In fact, there were some silver linings in all those storm clouds. Here’s a look at what got us here, and where we’re going next.

Despite the hardship and losses of lives, jobs, and businesses in 2020, several important positives have emerged to help us along in the year ahead. Consider the following:

—The overdue reversal of uncontrolled SKU proliferation through expedited rationalization and reduction of SKUs. This is benefiting manufacturers and retailers alike.

—Accelerated growth of e-commerce transactions executed via click-and-collect and home delivery fulfillment capabilities.

—Excellent performance of brick-and-mortar grocery retailers.

—Strength of virtually all frozen and refrigerated categories.

—Imaginative responses of many food procurements and sales professionals uniting to identify alternative products, solutions, and sources.

—Proven resiliency of food supply chains, which stressed and bent, but did not break under extreme conditions.

—Acknowledgment and classification of food supply chain workers as essential, along with positive attention brought to the entire supply chain profession.

—Exploration and rediscovery of refrigerated and frozen foods by new customers from multiple generations, forming new buying habits and creating opportunities.

—More families preparing and eating healthier meals together.

A TOUGH YEAR

Logistics providers are looking to more physical automation and labor mitigation, such as the palletizing/depalletizing robots shown here that work in all temperatures. (Photo courtesy of Dematic)

But there’s no question that 2020 was tough. As Covid-19 took hold a year ago, foodservice product flows nearly halted while volumes and velocities at retail accelerated almost overnight. Panic buying, hoarding and Covid-19 outbreaks within food plants made the situation worse. Despite this, consumers saw only temporary shortages.

While variety became more limited, consumers were barely impacted. The public will never appreciate the frenzied behind-the-scenes heroics as the industry scrambled to maintain functionality.

The best in our supply chain professionals came out, as they leveraged relationships and united within peer groups. Many of these relationships had been formed within trade associations across the industry: the Global Cold Chain Alliance, the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals, the Food Marketing Institute, International Foodservice Distributors Association, the National Frozen & Refrigerated Foods Association, the International Dairy Deli Bakery Association, the Produce Marketing Association, the United Fresh Produce Association and the American Frozen Food Institute. Kudos, especially, to FMI and IFDA for helping foodservice supply chain workers find jobs within retail.

We’ve all learned from this pandemic, developing new habits and adopting new ways, such as the use of Zoom. Not all these new ways will stay when Covid ends, but they’ve helped us identify inefficiencies and speed up the use of new technologies. The new normal will likely be substantially different with societal and business adjustments, similar to what evolved in the aftermaths of WWII and September 11.

So, what is on the horizon?

The foodservice industry will recover gradually, but retail volumes will remain strong into the foreseeable future. Demand for temperature-controlled warehousing will continue to increase as domestic capacities in public and private refrigerated warehouses are already tight. Increased expectations for safety stocks, perhaps even supported or subsidized by government, could compound demand. Home delivery of frozen and refrigerated items will remain strong as the industry seeks to cut costs and improve execution.

Finally, food waste remains a significant challenge. More than a third of all food in the United States — valued at more than a trillion dollars — is wasted each year. We need to work together to find a solution.

The good news is that high-performing integrated supply chain groups with leaders empowered to collaboratively drive change are emerging. More CEOs are viewing the supply chain not as an expense to control but as a mission-critical strategic weapon worthy of investment. Greater value is being placed on supply chain resiliency, agility, and capabilities.

DECADE OF THE SUPPLY CHAIN

We can all transition from the isolation of 2020 and venture into 2021 with new purpose by engaging with peers and connecting with others via trade associations. We are in this together and the journey will get better. The supply chain and food industry communities are welcoming; there is no need to go it alone. Expect the 2020s to be the decade of the supply chain. Godspeed in the year ahead.

John Haggerty, the former VP of business development at Burris Logistics, is a supply chain consultant within the food industry. He can be reached at [email protected].

LOGISTICS LEDGER

Philadelphia-based Honor Foods, a unit of Burris Logistics company (burrislogistics.com), has begun operations at its new $50 million warehouse and office on a 20-acre site at 5505 Tacony Street. The expansion allows Honor Foods to broaden its product portfolio to better serve its nearly 800 customers, and add new ones, in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states… Lineage Logistics (lineagelogistics.com), Novi, Mich., has launched Lineage Link through a partnership with San Francisco-based Turvo (turvo.com), a provider of collaborative logistics software. Billed as the temperature-controlled logistics industry’s first technology solution enabling actionable insight and control across the entire supply chain, the software is said to provide Lineage customers with “unprecedented visibility to their inventory, orders and shipments, enabling data-driven decision-making.” Lineage will deploy Turvo’s technology at more than 200 facilities this year and ultimately across the majority of its global network of 330+ facilities in 15 countries… Interstate Cold Storage (interstatecoldstorage.com), Ft. Wayne, Ind., has named Charles Betts national sales manager, responsible for all five of its cold storage facilities in Indiana and Ohio. The Global Cold Chain Alliance (gcca.org), Arlington, Va., has named Jordan Bonfitto director of government affairs and Rachael Oury senior manager of industry promotion.

YOUR CHECKLIST FOR 2021

The culture of proactive innovation will encourage the development of external relationships and internal collaboration and ideation. For 2021 consider:

1. Resiliency enhancement and continuity planning tools and services.
2. Network modeling and design tools and services.
3. Cost to serve analytics tools and services.
4. Outsourcing specialized labor and services.
5. Enhanced Covid-19 specific sanitation technologies to provide safer work environments.
6. Physical automation and labor mitigation, specifically modular incremental process-specific solutions.
7. Solidifying refrigerated logistics capabilities through contracted service providers and/or increasing, even constructing new owned assets and expanding self-operated functions and facilities.
8. Enhancing supply chain service capabilities to improve agility in serving emerging channels with smaller, faster, more responsiveness including direct-to-consumer fulfillment.
9. Process automation software and analytics tools designed to improve data transparency, access, and utilization and automate inefficient manual clerical processes.

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