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Where do emerging food leaders see the industry heading over the next five years? For the second year of our informal survey, we asked about 60 Cornell University food program students to rank the importance of various food trends including plant-based, sustainability, inflation, and more. Cornell University Professor Dan Hooker and one of his students join The Food Institute Podcast to help us break down the results.
More About Dan Hooker:
Dan is a global retail and consumer packaged goods executive with broad experience across diverse business environments and formats, leading traditional food retail operations and merchandising, as well as product development, consumer and category analytics, sourcing and procurement, global trading, national sales and ecommerce. Dan is an outstanding strategist and general manager, and he has led the successful startup of multiple diverse businesses. Known for and recognized as one of the world’s leading authorities on retailers’ proprietary brands, he has shaped clients’ programs across four continents and eight classes of trade. His passion is in helping companies see their unique DNA and positioning and creating actionable marketing and sales strategies essential for their success.
After earning a degree from Cornell University in Agribusiness and Marketing, Dan plunged headlong into retail joining Aldi Foods as a District Manager. In the early 1990’s Wakefern/ShopRite was very concerned about Aldi’s expansion east and Dan jumped at the opportunity to start a business, and moved to West Springfield, MA and opened the first Price Rite Store. Today there are over 70 Price Rite stores that generate over $1 Billion in annual revenue and they are a strategic growth driver for Wakefern.
After spending two years at Arthur Andersen as a retail consultant Dan spent fourteen years at Daymon Worldwide working with manufacturers and retailers across the world. Dan’s career at Daymon progressed rapidly, and In 2011 Dan was appointed to the Executive Leadership Team (ELT) as the Chief Supplier Officer (CSO). As the CSO Dan was responsible for Category Management and Analytics, Supplier Relationships, Global Sourcing and Procurement and ran Daymon’s import and export businesses. As a member of the ELT Dan was instrumental in re-inventing Daymon from consulting/brokerage company to a broader retail services company. Dan left Daymon at the end of 2013 and joined Trilliant Food and Nutrition in January of 2014 as the Vice President of Sales for national accounts and ecommerce.
For the last four years Dan has focused on the digital channel selling to ecommerce retailers and running multi-million-dollar businesses for Walmart.com and Jet.com.
And today, Dan is on the Faculty at the SC Johnson College of Business at Cornell University where he teaches both graduates and undergraduates in Food and Consumables Marketing, Supply Chain Strategy, and he is the Director of External Education for the Food Industry Management Program.
Dan has an MBA from the University of Connecticut.
To learn more about the SC Johnson College of Business at Cornell University, please visit:
https://dyson.cornell.edu/
Sign-Up for FI Retail 360:
https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/cIOL5ME/FIRetail360
Mentioned in this Episode – Leveraging AI in Plant-Based Innovation:
https://foodinstitute.com/podcast/leveraging-ai-in-plant-based-innovation/
