Everyone talks about “The Warehouse of the Future” being completely automated with robotics, but most warehouses don’t even feel like 2005, much less 2025. Thousands of square feet with pedestrians and machinery flying around getting orders out the door — all orchestrated based on timestamps, paperwork, and spreadsheets. Safety issues run rampant. Productivity slips. And OS&D claims pile up, costing money and your reputation. Something is missing: visibility into your people, processes, and product — all backed by data that doesn’t take an army of engineers to make decisions with. That’s how you build the gold standard of warehouse operations — and here’s the blueprint on how leading Food Service Distributors are doing it.

Key Takeaways: Learn the common misconceptions and roadblocks when it comes to “The Warehouse of the Future” – See examples of the most common risks that warehouses face across safety, productivity, and quality – Get a practical roadmap from food service companies on how they address those risks and up-level their operations to “The Gold Standard”

Speaker(s): Marc Gyongyosi, CEO OneTrack.ai (asking to bring distributor partner)

If email communication is essential to your business, then so is your organization’s understanding of three technical protocols that you might never have heard of: SPF, DMARC, and DKIM.

Only if your organization implements all three of these protocols can you ensure that your outgoing business emails will be received by your intended recipients.

Key Takeaways: In this session The Palmer Family of Companies’ Director of Information Security, Frank Smith, will explain these protocols in terms any businessperson can understand, and will talk about how your company’s information technology teams should go about implementing these standards. Frank will also offer insight into the Palmer Family of Companies’ experiences helping its clients and vendors implement these standards to strengthen the stance of supply chain as well.

Speaker(s): Drew Saur, CIO, Palmer Foods, Frank Smith, Plamer Foods

Per the FMCSA, more than 40% of truckers today are over 55, and employers are finding it challenging to maintain their driver teams as this demographic reaches retirement and ages out of the national workforce. Carriers across the nation are scrambling to attract and retain not only experienced talent but also younger hires whose priorities and expectations for their employers are quite different from prior generations. Roughly 87% of workers between the ages of 25 and 45 consider workforce training important, and an employee that feels their company won’t help advance their career is 12 times more likely to leave their job in search of one that better aligns with their longterm goals. The answer to these challenges is clear: investing in workforce training is essential to both attracting and retaining new talent—which is especially true as Gen Z begins entering the workforce. Further, today career training isn’t just limited to skills directly related to an employee’s duties. Professional development courses, such as soft skills, personal financial literacy, leadership, and critical thinking, can all contribute to a more well-rounded workforce. But workforce training doesn’t just benefit your employees: it can also add to your company’s bottom line. Consider the numbers: – Profit margin gain: Companies that focus on employee development and training see an average 24% gain in profit margins. – Productivity gain: “Strengths-based” organizations—that is, those that focus on refining the strengths of its workers—improved employee productivity by 8% to 18%. – Turnover reduction: 76% of employees say they are more likely to stay in their job if their employer offers ongoing training opportunities. Put simply: investing in employee education and training pays dividends in both the short- and long-term.

Key Takeaways: The high-level takeaways that Natalie will deliver during her presentation include: – Investing in career development is vital to the next generation of workers, who are drawn to companies that offer ongoing training opportunities. – Investing in talent development and retention is a strategic business decision and one that is the responsibility of not only HR but all functional departments and leaders. – Investing in your talent leads to a reduction in turnover, higher employee morale and satisfaction which in turn drives operational efficiency and long-term profitability in your industry.

Speaker(s): Natalie Williams, MBA Vice President of Ancora Training

In today’s highly competitive food distribution industry, understanding what “good” looks like isn’t just about meeting industry standards—it’s about exceeding them. This presentation delves into how deeper benchmarking and data-driven analytics can transform your entire supply chain. From inbound receiving to warehouse management, outbound pallet and truck optimization, efficient loading, and last-mile proof of delivery (POD), discover how data-driven decision-making, such as scan percentages, returns, etc., can drive measurable savings and efficiency. Learn how to leverage real-time insights, best practices, and performance metrics to identify cost-saving opportunities, minimize waste, and enhance service levels. By optimizing key touch points across operations, you’ll gain actionable insights that lead to smarter processes, reduced costs, and improved customer satisfaction. Join us to explore the power of deeper benchmarks and uncover what operational excellence truly looks like—and what it can do for your business when done right.

Key Takeaways:

• Utilizing Real-World Examples of Food Distributors:
• Maximizing Efficiency Through Benchmarkin
• Learn how deeper benchmarking and data analytics can optimize your supply chain
• Cost-Saving Strategies
• Identify key opportunities to reduce operational costs, minimize waste, and improve resource utilization.
• Data-Driven Decision-Making
• Discover how real-time insights and performance metrics can enhance service levels and streamline operations.
• Optimizing Key Touch Points
• Gain actionable strategies to improve warehouse management, truck loading, and outbound logistics for increased efficiency.
• Enhancing Customer Satisfaction
• Understand how operational excellence translates to faster deliveries, fewer errors, and a superior customer experience.

Speaker(s): Will Collins, Current Chief Executive Officer at BFC Software

While AI is transforming and reshaping our work-lives, I believe that Emotional Intelligence is more crucial than ever for humans to thrive. Companies are making significant investments in AI and up-skilling employees to enhance speed, growth and innovation. At the same time, it is also important to maintain focus and up-skill our Emotional Intelligence capabilities. Artificial Intelligence may act like a cognitive genius scoring 99% higher on IQ tests than humans, however it fails dramatically, scoring in the 32nd percentile in Emotional Intelligence use. How leaders fully engage Emotional Intelligence alongside AI is mission critical. This interactive session will explore why Emotional Intelligence is a necessity alongside AI in leadership today.

Key Takeaways: Our Emotional Intelligence is our uniquely human superpower. Leaders that develop a key understanding of AI and simultaneously engage high levels of Emotional Intelligence will be markedly ahead of the crowd. This session will help: • Determine why strong usage of Emotional Intelligence can significantly elevate results. • Learn how Emotional Intelligence can assist leaders by making people feel connected, socially fulfilled and understood. • Asses the critical Emotional Intelligence skills necessary to build top performing teams, simultaneously with new uses of AI. • Engage strategies to elevate key Emotional Intelligence skills to future-proof you and your team.

Speakers(s): Jillian McLaughlin, McLaughlin Mentoring, Inc

: Food service distribution is more demanding than ever. Distributors must balance perishable goods, tight delivery windows, evolving customer expectations, and strict food safety regulations—all while managing labor shortages and rising operational costs. Traditional delivery models can no longer keep up. This session introduces the PLAN | EXECUTE | ENGAGE | IMPROVE framework—an actionable strategy to optimize delivery operations, enhance service levels, and reduce costs in today’s fast-paced environment. PLAN: Optimize fleet efficiency and reduce miles with dynamic routing that adapts to real-time demand and last-minute order changes. EXECUTE: Streamline last-mile logistics with mobile technology, automating proof of delivery and real-time exception management. ENGAGE: Minimize missed deliveries and improve customer satisfaction through proactive communication and automated status updates. IMPROVE: Use data-driven insights to refine delivery strategies, enhance safety, and ensure compliance with food safety regulations. Attendees will leave with practical strategies to increase efficiency, improve service, and future-proof their operations—leveraging technology to stay ahead in an evolving distribution landscape.

Key Takeaways: Key Takeaways for Attendees: Optimize Route Planning: Improve on-time performance while reducing miles and fuel costs. Enhance Delivery Execution: Leverage digital proof of delivery and real-time tracking. Strengthen Customer Engagement: Minimize disruptions with automated notifications and status updates. Drive Continuous Improvement: Utilize analytics to refine delivery strategies and improve compliance.

Speakers(s): Cyndi Brandt, VP, Fleet Solutions, Descartes

Join your industry peers for focused, solution-oriented discussion groups led by our distinguished Solutions Council members. This workshop offers a valuable opportunity to connect with colleagues facing similar challenges and collaboratively develop effective strategies. 

Participants will break out into one of four specialized groups: 

• Operations: Address operational efficiency, process optimization, supply chain challenges, and implementation of best practices.
• Transportation: Explore logistics innovations, fleet management strategies, regulatory compliance, and sustainability initiatives.
• HR/Talent: Discuss recruitment strategies, employee retention, workforce development, and creating positive workplace cultures.
• Innovation: Collaborate on emerging technologies, product development, market disruption strategies, and fostering a culture of innovation.

Each workgroup will be facilitated by Solutions Council members with extensive expertise in their respective fields. This interactive format encourages open dialogue about current challenges while providing a platform to share successful approaches and develop actionable solutions you can implement immediately. 

Bring your most pressing issues and leave with practical strategies developed through the collective wisdom of your professional community!

Details coming soon.

The team at Wipfli has been collecting data from and implementing process improvement at manufacturers throughout North America for more than 15 years. Starting this year, 2025, Wipfli is collecting high level state of the industry information for distributors, with a focus in food & beverage. During this presentation, Gene Mussel and Cara Walton, directors at Wipfli, will review findings from Wipfli’s Distribution Pulse studies and compare the results to performance in the manufacturing industry to outline a holistic view of the market. Wipfli will also take best practices they have seen and implemented in the manufacturing sector and apply those to distribution. Providing distributors with a metric driven approach to exhibit a performance improvement mindset. Utilizing insights from the pulse data, distributors can establish real-world performance expectations and challenge their team members to generate an edginess and drive for continuous improvement.

Key Takeaways: Metric driven organizations exhibit a performance improvement mindset and through the use of benchmarks. Firms can establish real-world performance expectations. Challenging your team members to aspire to achieve key benchmarks generates a drive for continuous improvement. Developing a CI process that fits your team’s culture allows for all levels of the organization structure to identify, influence, and enact process improvements to drive to performance targets.

Speakers(s): Cara Walton, Director, Wipfli; Gene Mussel, Director, Wipfili

A focused working session addressing the rising insurance costs affecting the foodservice distribution industry. This workshop will examine current premium trends, explore risk management strategies, and identify opportunities for controlling escalating insurance expenses in an increasingly challenging market environment. 

In today’s competitive landscape, foodservice distributors must adopt innovative strategies to attract, develop, and retain top talent. With workforce dynamics shifting, understanding employee expectations, such as work-life balance, career growth, and wellness programs, is critical to building a strong, engaged team. Explore best practices for recruiting talent and implementing continuous learning programs that equip employees with new skills. Learn how to create a positive work environment that enhances job satisfaction, boosts motivation, and strengthens employee loyalty to ensure long-term success in an evolving industry. 

Presented by the National Grocers Association

In today’s hyper-competitive foodservice landscape, distributors face relentless pressure to maximize margins without sacrificing market share. This session pulls back the curtain on a real-world success story, showcasing how a leading distributor transformed their pricing strategy and achieved their financial goals by leveraging a price optimization solution. This distributor, burdened by outdated manual pricing processes, volatile costs, and fragmented data, needed a rapid solution to drive margin growth, increase case volume, sharpen their competitive edge, and instill confidence in their sales team’s pricing decisions – all while navigating a tight budget within a sub-12-month ROI requirement. 

This session will explore the customer’s initial challenges, including reps spending countless hours on manual pricing, inconsistent pricing strategies, and an inability to respond to commodity or cost fluctuations. We’ll explore the impact of these issues on their bottom line and highlight how a price optimization solution empowered the sales force with actionable, data-driven insights. 

Going beyond theory, this session showcases tangible, quantifiable results. Attendees will learn how the distributor not only achieved but significantly surpassed their margin improvement targets within the fiscal year, dramatically improved their competitive standing, and fostered a newfound confidence within their sales team. We’ll also dissect the critical success factors, including proactive change management strategies and effectively navigating internal resistance, that were essential to the project’s success. This session provides practical, immediately applicable takeaways for attendees seeking to implement similar solutions within their own organizations, enabling them to unlock hidden margin potential, thrive amidst market volatility, and gain a decisive competitive advantage. Engage in Q&A and benchmark your organization’s pricing maturity against other attendees in this interactive session. 

Key Takeaways:

• Identify pricing challenges: Pinpoint the common obstacles hindering growth and diagnose your pricing pain points
• Harness price optimization: Learn how a targeted solution drives margin gains and boost sales team confidence.
• Real-world example: Gain insights from a case study of successful price optimization implementation.
• Implement best practices: Take away practical strategies for deploying similar solutions in your organization.
• Justify your budget: Learn to build a compelling case and secure funding for price optimization.
• Master change management: Understand the critical role of change management in ensuring successful technology implementations
• Empower your sales team: Discover how your existing data can enable your sales force to make smarter decisions and close more deals
• Navigate volatility: Learn to react quickly to fluctuating costs to maintain profitability.

Speaker(s): Dallas Crawford, Co-Founder Skysheep

AI is no longer just a buzzword—it’s transforming warehouse management and delivering real results. In this session, Charles will explore how AI has evolved from early, narrow applications to powerful systems that drive efficiency and address problems like labor shortages and rising costs across mature markets.

Charles will dig into the challenges warehouse operations face with traditional, manual systems and demonstrate how AI-enabled automation is transforming the industry. By making real-time, data-driven decisions and optimizing tasks, AI helps warehouses improve efficiency—whether it’s enhancing inventory management or streamlining workflows. He will also explore how AI is poised to further enhance warehouse operations, from re-engineering Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) to enabling smarter forecasting and replenishment. While AI has already made strides in sales and back-office functions, its next major impact will be on the shop floor.

Practical advice will also be shared on how businesses can begin preparing for the future—by modernizing their technology infrastructure and developing a roadmap to fully leverage AI investments. This session is ideal for anyone looking to understand the tangible impact AI can have on their operations and how to take the next step in implementing it. 

Key Takeaways 

• Understanding AI’s Evolution: Learn how AI has progressed from narrow applications to powerful, generative systems that address critical operational challenges like labor shortages and cost increases.
• Future of AI in WMS: Understand the upcoming evolution of AI in warehouse environments, particularly how AI will soon reshape Warehouse Management Systems (WMS).
• Practical Steps for AI Integration: Learn how businesses can begin modernizing their technology infrastructure and develop a strategic roadmap to maximize AI investments. 

Speaker(s): Charles Fallon, President LIDD Consultants

As the adoption of exoskeletons and exosuits continues to rise, organizations are seeking clear strategies for successful deployment. In this panel discussion, industry leaders from sectors including grocery distribution, heavy machinery, and the military will share their experiences. Topics will include securing user buy-in, integrating exosuits within existing safety and regulatory frameworks, and the practical steps to operationalize these technologies. Attendees will gain valuable insights into the benefits of exosuits for enhancing worker well-being and boosting productivity. 

Key Takeaways: 

• User adoption and acceptance are easy if properly approached 
• Exosuits can seamlessly fit into existing safety and regulatory frameworks 
• Operationalizing exosuits is achievable with a well-structured playbook. 

Speakers(s): Jennifer Jones, Director of Client Servies, HeroWear; Phil Heidie, Director of Environmental health and Safety at URM Foods, Rep from Whole Food

Workshop Description: In the fast-evolving landscape of foodservice distribution, companies face mounting pressure to optimize supply chain operations while maintaining service reliability and cost efficiency. Many organizations struggle with connecting high-level strategic goals to on-the-ground execution, leading to inefficiencies in routing, delivery schedules, and fleet utilization. Let alone understand how AI can help. This workshop will explore how data and technology can bridge this gap, offering actionable insights that drive efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance delivery performance. Attendees will gain a comprehensive understanding of how emerging technologies are transforming last-mile logistics, real-time decision-making, and resource allocation. We will talk about how they can navigate market dynamics with technology. Whether it is automation or optimization, foodservice providers have to use technology if they want to respond quickly to cost-efficiency and customer service trends in the market. Through real-world case studies, participants will see how industry leaders are leveraging AI to: -Improve route clustering and depot assignments for optimal fleet usage -Minimize costly inefficiencies such as cross-river truck movements -Enhance supply chain resilience through predictive modeling and data-driven decision-making -Empower frontline managers with intuitive, scalable tools that connect strategy to execution The session will feature interactive discussions and live demonstrations of AI-driven route planning models, equipping attendees with practical knowledge to implement these strategies within their organizations.  

Key Takeaways: Is automation or optimization the solution? Understanding how AI-powered route optimization improves fleet efficiency and cost savings. How about generative AI, can it help route you? Practical strategies to enhance supply chain resilience through predictive analytics. Real-world case studies demonstrating the impact of AI in foodservice distribution. Actionable insights on integrating AI-driven logistics tools into existing workflows. Steps for bridging the gap between strategic planning and real-time execution.  

Speaker(s): Layla Shaikley, CPO, Co-Founder, Wise Systems (we will ask to bring a distributor member) 

Details Coming Soon.

Details coming soon. Annika Stenson will present some of IFDA’s latest research and takeaways 

Geofencing is one of the most potent tools in telematics. Combined with exception alerts, it lets you establish virtual geographic boundaries and be notified when a telematics device crosses a defined area. It’s especially helpful for tracking arrival and detention times or whether a trailer is being moved or used inappropriately. Your telematics system can automatically let you know. However, geofences and notifications can be overwhelming when you’re managing a fleet of temperature-controlled vehicles moving across various routes with multiple stops. This workshop will equip fleet managers with practical strategies for implementing and optimizing geofences. It will also cover practical applications, such as automated arrival and departure alerts, real-time route monitoring, theft prevention, and detention time reduction. We will address common challenges, such as driver privacy concerns, telematics signal limitations, and ROI considerations for small vs. large fleets.  

Key Takeaways  
By the end of this session, fleet managers will have best practices and a clear roadmap for using geofencing to optimize routes, improve security, and enhance overall fleet performance. 

In this session, Integrity’s Chief Information Security Officer will prioritize the top 5 things to consider implementing in your business to improve your information security program. Scott will define these 5 priorities and discuss the “why” behind considering implementation. He’ll also provide guidance in each category and promote free resources applicable to your industry that your business can use to execute on your roadmap. 1. Security Risk Assessments 2. Cybersecurity Controls (Protect/Detect/Respond/Recover) 3. Security Awareness 4. Administrative Policies 5. Artificial Intelligence (AI) This session is geared toward C suite executives and appropriate for operations leadership and IT leadership.

Key Takeaways:  After this session you will have a fundamental understanding of top priorities to consider for implementation related to a conservative yet effective cybersecurity program for your business, applicable to your industry.  

Speaker(s): Scott Stevens, CISSP, Chief Information Security Officer, Integrity Technology Solutions