Canadian Food Sentiment Index Debut, Thanksgiving Table metrics, St. Hubert gets focussed, and guest Heidi Dutton, CEO of Lovingly Made

The Food Professor

In this episode, we're thrilled to welcome Heidi Dutton, CEO of Lovingly Made. Heidi shares how her organization is revolutionizing plant protein for people, pets, and aquaculture, ensuring the highest standards in sustainable sourcing. We dive deep into the world of agricultural entrepreneurship, with Sylvain providing his expert insights, particularly as someone who admires the ag innovators of Saskatchewan.

Sylvain also brings us updates from his recent travels to Calgary, where he explored the latest Carbon Border Assessment Mechanisms developments.

The highlight of today's episode is the release of the brand-new Canadian Food Sentiment Index Bi-Annual Insight Report. Sylvain walks us through the report's inspiration, key objectives, and some of the most surprising findings. With Thanksgiving just around the corner, we look at the good (and not-so-good) news for the typical holiday table, from rising costs to sustainable food trends.

We also explore how allergy-friendly restaurants find a competitive edge in a challenging food service market. In the spirit of consumer trends, we discuss how significant brands like St-Hubert respond to consumer price sensitivities with freezes and discounts.

Lastly, we touch on exciting news from Couche-Tard's business landscape as they increase their bid in the ever-competitive market. Tune in for this packed episode full of insights and expert commentary on the future of food and sustainability!

Read the full Canadian Food Sentiment report here.

The Food Professor #podcast is presented by Caddle.

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.

Michael LeBlanc is the president and founder of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc, a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and now, media entrepreneur. He has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career.

Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions and participated worldwide in thought leadership panels, most recently on the main stage in Toronto at Retail Council of Canada’s Retail Marketing conference with leaders from Walmart & Google. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience with Levi's, Black & Decker, Hudson's Bay, CanWest Media, Pandora Jewellery, The Shopping Channel and Retail Council of Canada to his advisory, speaking and media practice.

Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including the award-winning No.1 independent retail industry podcast in America, Remarkable Retail with his partner, Dallas-based best-selling author Steve Dennis; Canada's top retail industry podcast The Voice of Retail and Canada's top food industry and one of the top Canadian-produced management independent podcasts in the country, The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois from Dalhousie University in Halifax.

Rethink Retail has recognized Michael as one of the top global retail experts for the fourth year in a row, Thinkers 360 has named him on of the Top 50 global thought leaders in retail, RTIH has named him a top 100 global though leader in retail technology and Coresight Research has named Michael a Retail AI Influencer. If you are a BBQ fan, you can tune into Michael’s cooking show, Last Request BBQ, on YouTube, Instagram, X and yes, TikTok.

Michael is available for keynote presentations helping retailers, brands and retail industry insiders explaining the current state and future of the retail industry in North America and around the world.