Welcome to the The Food Professor podcast episode 35, I’m Michael LeBlanc, and I’m Sylvain Charlebois!
In this episode our special guest is Melanie Morrison, CEO & Founder of BetterCart, an online grocery comparison engine that has some voodoo that captures prices on the shelves and enables retailers, brands and shoppers to compare prices, and for our popular new Trying Stuff segment, we have a fun selection of Ice Lollies from Fressy Bessie - 100% real fruit.
Reminder to everyone about our YouTube channel where you can watch the entire first part of our podcast with bonus content and the whole Trying Stuff segment
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Inflation Nation: Are we capturing food inflation correctly?
Latest Research from Dalhousie Agri-Food Lab on Food Allergies
The Newfoundland and Labrador government plans to implement a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages next year, .20cents a litre, raising $9Million for health education
There isn't enough strawberries in strawberry pop tarts: alleges that the products contain more pears and apples than strawberries. The case asks for $5 million in relief. BTW, there are no plums in Plum sauce either, it's mostly pumpkin!
Weston sells majority of its bakery to FGF brands for 1.2Billion: what do we know about the purchasing company?
If you liked what you heard you can follow us on Apple iTunes , Spotify or your favourite podcast platform, please rate and review, and be sure and recommend to a friend or colleague in the grocery, foodservice, or restaurant industry.
I’m Michael LeBlanc, producer and host of the all new Conversations with CommerceNext podcast and a bunch of other stuff, and I’m Sylvain Charlebois!
Have a safe week everyone!
Melanie Morrison
I love working in the tech industry and in my capacity as CEO and Founder at BetterCart. BetterCart operates in the Food and AgTech space and is a big data company providing pricing data and advanced analytics to grocery retailers, manufacturers, and producers across North America. Creating disruptive technologies that help companies better understand their competitive landscapes, as well as the utility of price analytics and data science to enhance profitability, is what drives and inspires my team. Come see us at BetterCartAnalytics.com, or reach out directly anytime.
At BetterCart, we also use our technology for the local, better good. Based on our experience and observations, we know that comparing grocery prices across stores is hard to do, and that people end up spending too much money at the grocery store because they don't have adequate grocery price comparison tools. At BetterCart, we're addressing the price comparison tool deficit in the grocery space, and have developed a free price comparison web app called BetterCart.ca. Helping people save money at the grocery store so they can better meet their daily food and nutritional requirements is one of BetterCart's social impact goals.
About Us
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.
About Michael
Michael is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc. and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada and the Bank of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience with Levi's, Black & Decker, Hudson's Bay, Today's Shopping Choice and Pandora Jewellery.
Michael has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. He has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions with C-level executives and participated worldwide in thought leadership panels. ReThink Retail has added Michael to their prestigious Top Global Retail Influencers list for 2024 for the fourth year in a row.
Michael is also the president of Maven Media, producing a network of leading trade podcasts, including Remarkable Retail , with best-selling author Steve Dennis, now ranked one of the top retail podcasts in the world.
Based in San Francisco, Global eCommerce Leaders podcast explores global cross-border issues and opportunities for eCommerce brands and retailers.
Last but not least, Michael is the producer and host of the "Last Request Barbeque" channel on YouTube, where he cooks meals to die for - and collaborates with top brands as a food and product influencer across North America
