2025 Education Program + Speakers

Monday, January 6, 2025

Independent Exchange

Our week begins with a meaningful opportunity for retailers and other attendees to sit down and explore essential topics to guide the success of your family business. Relevant and emerging subjects will be explored in a free-flowing format offering plenty of opportunities to get your most pressing challenges discussed. Information and dialogues from this share group will improve your business efficiencies and profitability, while also providing a conducive atmosphere to share best practices and explore new concepts with fellow California food retailers.

Tuesday, January 7, 2024

Building Brand Loyalty & Memorable Experiences

With each new launch the hysteria around the ‘Johnny Cupcakes’ brand continues to conquer the globe. The reaction goes from 10 block queues as anxious fans await for the shop to open to Cupcake tattoos, yes, permanent ones.

In this awe-inducing presentation Johnny will educate you on how you too can create a wave of loyalty and obsession around your products, your business and within your teams through the power of social media & experiential branding.

Johnny “Cupcakes” Earle

Founder, Johnny Cupcakes T-Shirts

If you dream of inspiring cult-like brand loyalty—the kind that involves mile-long queues and even permanent tattoos—Johnny Cupcakes is for you. The founder of the world-renowned tee-shirt brand Johnny Cupcakes, Johnny’s known for helping other people create blueprints for building brand loyalty, creating memorable experiences, and inspiring innovation.

With global store openings, thousands of customers with his logo tattooed on themselves, people who camp out for his products, and high-profile collaborations with giants such as The Simpsons, Power Rangers, and Nickelodeon, Johnny was named America’s #1 Young Entrepreneur by Business Week, Top Innovator in Retail by The Boston Globe, and featured in INC magazine as the CEO of one of the world’s fastest growing independent businesses.

Despite being in one of the most difficult product categories to stand-out in, and a founder of a brand when he was just 19 years old, Johnny’s solution to his business challenges was to create such a unique brand experience that his customers would loyally line-up around the block, time and time again, just to be able to sport his logo on their clothing.

Since then, through his talks and creative consulting, Johnny has shared his strategies with clients that include Apple, L’Oreal, Disney, IBM, Audi, Harvard University, Wieden+Kennedy, Marriott, and P&G.

Also a TEDx speaker, Johnny has been featured in media such as MTV, NPR, Forbes, WIRED, Newsweek, and as a case study in several branding and business books.

Wednesday, January 8, 2025

Future of Food

In this engaging 90-minute session, Mike Lee will explore the cutting-edge trends and innovations shaping the future of food and grocery retail. Drawing from his extensive experience and forward-thinking insights, Mike will provide independent grocery owners with actionable strategies to thrive in an evolving marketplace dominated by retail giants.

Key Topic Areas

  • Emerging consumer preferences and behaviors in food purchasing
  • Technological advancements in grocery retail and their impact on operations
  • Sustainable and ethical food trends and their relevance to independent grocers
  • Strategies for competing with major retailers through personalization and community engagement

This session will equip independent grocery owners with:

  • Innovative ideas to differentiate their businesses
  • Insights into future consumer trends to inform strategic planning
  • Practical approaches to leverage technology and data in their operations
  • Inspiration to think creatively about the future of their stores and communities

Mike Lee

Author & Designer: MISE

Principal Futurist: THE FUTURE MARKET

Mike is the author and designer of Mise: On the Future of Food, a book of scenarios depicting what our food system could look like in the future. The four scenarios in Mise (pronounced “meez”), which range from the year 2033 to 2067, were created to help people better understand the potential long-term impact of today’s major current events on how we make and eat food in the coming decades.

Mike is the principal futurist of The Future Market, a consultancy that explores what our food system could look like in the next 5 to 50 years. The Future Market works with established food and agriculture companies, leveraging Mike’s expertise, to research and envision the future of food and develop strategies that will empower them to flourish in that future.

Through The Future Market and his previous company, Alpha Food Labs, Mike has created future scenarios and innovation strategies for food companies such as Danone, Mars, Campbell’s, Simple Mills, King Arthur Flour, Beef+Lamb New Zealand, The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, and more. Prior to The Future Market and Alpha Food Labs, Mike held roles leading product development initiatives on the Innovation & New Ventures team at Chobani.

He is a frequent global speaker on the future of food. He has been featured in many conferences and publications such as The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Bloomberg, Fast Company, The New York Times, Natural Products Expo East/West, The Summer/Winter Fancy Food Shows, Groceryshop, EvokeAg, and more. Mike regularly writes about innovation and the future of food at thefuturemarket.substack.com.

Mike is the grandson and son of Chinese American restaurant owners in Metro Detroit, where he resides, and was raised in those kitchens and dining rooms. The atmosphere of innovation in Detroit, from his family’s food ventures to the auto industry’s concept cars were crucial in shaping his point of view on innovation. Mike has a business degree from the University of Michigan and design from the Parsons School of Design.

National Political & Regulatory State of Play

Greg Ferrara

President & CEO, NGA

Greg Ferrara is the President and CEO of the Washington, DC based National Grocers Association (NGA).  NGA is the national trade association that is the voice of the retail and wholesale companies which comprise the independent sector of the supermarket industry, as well as those companies that provide products and services to the industry.  In his role as President and CEO, Greg is responsible for working with NGA’s Board of Directors to develop and implement a strategic vision which advances the Association’s efforts and public policy positions.  Prior to being appointed President and CEO in September 2019, Greg served for many years in various leadership roles at NGA, including as the organization’s chief lobbyist.

Greg brings a wealth of experience in the grocery industry, having managed his family’s century-old supermarket in New Orleans before the store was ultimately destroyed in 2005 in Hurricane Katrina.  He holds a BA in Political Science from Loyola University New Orleans and is a fellow of the prestigious Institute of Politics at Loyola University.  He is a graduate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Organization Management (IOM), is a graduate of the NGA Executive Leadership Program at Cornell University and is an Eagle Scout.  Greg and his wife Nicole are the proud parents of two children, Matthew and Katelyn.

Thursday, January 9, 2025

Create High Performance Through Humanity

How to unlock your team’s untapped capacity

Every leader wants their people to care about the business and its outcomes as much as they do. Those outcomes require high performance, engagement, productivity and a commitment to results. And often, those things are hampered by friction that naturally arises among messy, complex human beings.

  • Friction can look like:
  • Office politics & gossip
  • Low engagement
  • Lack of accountability
  • Remote work challenges
  • Poor collaboration

Policies and processes aren’t enough to reduce that friction, at least not for the long term. The solution to reducing friction lies within the human beings who are causing it. And everyone on the team, from the senior leader to the newest hire, whether working in the office or in their bedroom, has a part to play.

The key lies in our ability to activate our innate humanity. That is exactly what David can help you do. In this interactive talk, David draws on science, case studies and a pattern he has discovered in working with leaders and organizations around the world. You’ll learn and apply a simple framework you can draw on a napkin, that unlocks trust and connection – the foundation of our collective humanity. The principles you’ll explore, with David as your guide, will help you have productive tough conversations, mix accountability with empathy, engage remote team members and so much more.

In this session, participants will:

  • Identify simple daily practices they can use immediately to reduce the friction on their teams
  • Internalize a framework that guides behavior and naturally increases performance, innovation, retention, transparent communication and well-being
  • Shift their perception of leadership and the role they play in shaping the culture based on trust, connection and psychological safety

David Mead

David is committed to a world in which the vast majority of people wake up inspired to go to work, feel safe while they’re there and go home at the end of the day fulfilled by the work they do. Today, he’s here to share a few simple ideas that are helping to make that world a reality.

In 2004, he started a career in corporate training. A few years later, while earning an MBA with a focus in Organizational Development, he realized something. What he, and so many other people, were being taught in business school was contributing to the poor leadership he had been enduring for much of his career. In 2009, shortly after beginning his MBA studies, he met and was inspired by Simon Sinek and his concept of the Golden Circle and was invited to join Simon’s team. He started by developing content to help Simon share his powerful ideas and in 2012 he began speaking and facilitating workshops to help shift people’s perceptions about leadership and culture.

David has taken his years of practical experience and co-authored with Simon Sinek and Peter Docker, Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team, a step-by-step guide on how to discover your WHY, published September 2017. David is globally recognized as the “How” guy to Simon’s “Why.” David has presented these simple, inspiring ideas on 5 continents to over 150 organizations in a wide range of industries such as athletics, technology, retail, healthcare, finance, government and hospitality.

Regardless of the organization’s size, industry or country, David finds that these ideas resonate with those who want to find meaning in what they do and are committed to creating a culture where people come before profit.