The FEED powered by Loblaw

Michael LeBlanc
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  • Entrepreneurship
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Greetings and welcome to season two of The FEED, powered by Loblaw podcast! We conceived of The FEED as an opportunity to showcase thought leaders, taste makers, innovative brands and leaders, who are making a difference in the grocery and health industries and helping Canadians Live Life Well. We’re off to a great start, wrapping Season one and 2025 with a powerful interview with Benjamin Tal, Deputy Chief Economist from CIBC. In this, our second season, we’re talking with amazing entrepreneurs and thought leaders from coast-to-coast - from The Handpie Company out of PEI to celebrating 42 years of innovation and natural beauty with Parissa in Vancouver - and plenty more in between. So be sure and follow us on your favourite podcasting platform and our YouTube channel, and stay tuned for another season of The FEED, powered by Loblaw!

  1. 5d ago ·  Bonus

    Making Power Full Kids: Shantelle Rhynold, Executive Director, President's Choice Children's Charity

    In this episode of The FEED powered by Loblaw, host Michael LeBlanc sits down with Shantelle Rhynold, Executive Director of President's Choice Children's Charity, for an inspiring conversation about addressing child food insecurity in Canada and how school food programs help kids learn, grow, and thrive. Recorded live at Loblaw's head office, this episode explores how a national team of just nine people reached a remarkable milestone: feeding one million children. Shantelle shares her nine-year journey with PC Children's Charity, from a promotional planning role at Loblaw to marketing and fundraising, and now into executive leadership. She explains the charity's mission, removing hunger as a barrier to learning, and why feeding kids with dignity and without stigma is at the heart of everything the charity does. Listeners will learn how the Power Full Kids program works in nearly 2,200 schools coast to coast. Rather than shipping food, the charity provides flexible funding so each school can build the breakfast, snack or lunch program that fits its community. Programs must be universally accessible, run at least four days a week, and pair a fruit or vegetable with a protein or grain. Shantelle also explains the charity's equipment support, school audits, and mid-year funding reviews as it extends its reach to all three Canadian territories this year. Because Loblaw covers administration costs as founding partner, 100% of customer and community donations go directly back into communities. She also describes how Loblaw's network of stores, distribution centres and store support teams rallied together to help the charity hit its one-million milestone. Shantelle explains how the in-store checkout roundup program turns micro donations into major impact, and why small change matters when Canadians are feeling the pressure of food affordability. The conversation also digs into food education and innovation. Shantelle shares memorable stories from the field, including cooking with harvests from a hydroponic container farm in a remote northern Indigenous community in Saskatchewan, and a cheese-making class in Sarnia that revealed the power of hands-on learning. She previews the charity's next chapter: smaller, mobile hydroponic growing towers that teach kids how food travels from seed to plate. Michael and Shantelle also discuss how charities, provincial and federal governments, and like-minded organizations can collaborate without duplicating efforts, and why food insecurity is an invisible issue that exists in every community. Looking ahead, Shantelle says the priority is to make feeding one million children a sustainable annual commitment, then fill the gaps where help is needed most. Whether you're interested in Canadian retail, corporate social responsibility, school nutrition, food security or community giving, this episode offers an inspiring look at how Loblaw and PC Children's Charity are making a difference, one child at a time. About Your Host, Michael LeBlanc 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. 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 fifth year in a row, the National Retail Federation has designated Michael as on their Top Retail Voices for 2025 and 2026. Thinkers 360 has named him on of the Top 50 global thought leaders in retail. 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.

    Making Power Full Kids: Shantelle Rhynold, Executive Director, President's Choice Children's Charity

  2. Sep 22 ·  Bonus

    The Art and Science of Building Stores That Matter: Sharla Paraskevopoulos, SVP Real Estate, Loblaw

    The Myth that stores were going to go away and be replaced by eCommerce was just that: a myth.  Nobody knows that better than the person leading the team that built thousands of them. Recorded live at the third annual Loblaw Supplier Summit, Michael LeBlanc sits down with Sharla Paraskevopoulos, Senior Vice President, Real Estate at Loblaw Companies Limited, for a fast-paced, candid look at how Canada’s largest retailer decides where to build, what to build, and what a store should feel like when a customer walks in. Sharla’s path to real estate is a unique one: 18 years at Loblaw, starting in HR, moving to Shoppers Drug Mart as one of the first colleagues over after the acquisition, then five years leading operations for roughly 500 conventional grocery stores — including during the COVID era. Her takeaway from that stretch is a leadership lesson as much as a retail one: with no playbook and no textbook, you set clear objectives and anchor every decision to them. Then it’s on to the stores.  Sharla explains why Loblaw scrapped the old guardrail that kept banners five kilometres apart, and why its formats now coexist far more comfortably than anyone assumed. She unpacks the thinking behind the new No Frills design — the yellow frame as a beacon for value and volume, a simpler box underneath, and a deliberate refusal to signal discount through dim lights and shabby presentation. As she puts it, you shouldn’t have to feel discounted to shop value. She also opens up the data engine behind it all: the Market Analytics team sizing trade areas by population, income and cultural demographics; analogue stores used to forecast how a proposed location will perform; and data running through construction, value engineering, procurement, energy and CO2 measurement. AI is already live in maintenance — centrally dimming lights, managing climate, spotting a fridge heading for failure before it fails. And a preview of what’s next: Shoppers Drug Mart is being redesigned inside and out for the first time in 23 years, with more discovery and treasure hunting on the way. Store development, as Sharla says, is a blend of art and science. About Your Host, Michael LeBlanc 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. 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 fifth year in a row, the National Retail Federation has designated Michael as on their Top Retail Voices for 2025 and 2026. Thinkers 360 has named him on of the Top 50 global thought leaders in retail. 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.

    The Art and Science of Building Stores That Matter: Sharla Paraskevopoulos, SVP Real Estate, Loblaw

  3. Sep 15 ·  Bonus

    Dr. Isabelle Huot, Doctor of Nutrition, on Clean Label, Deepfakes and Building a Food Brand Inside Loblaw

    Recorded live at the third annual Loblaw Supplier Summit in Toronto, Michael LeBlanc sits down with Dr. Isabelle Huot, Doctor of Nutrition and founder of Isabelle Huot Docteure en nutrition — for her very first English-language podcast interview. A household name in Quebec after two decades on television, radio, and in the pages of the Journal de Montréal, Isabelle has written 19 books, sold more than a million copies, and is working on her twentieth. Along the way, she turned reader demand into a business: when people told her they loved her recipes but had no time to cook them, she started shipping nutritionally sound ready-to-eat meals to their doorstep. In this conversation, Isabelle traces how healthy eating has changed since she started — more variety, more multicultural food, and far less time to cook during the week — and why clean label has become the biggest shift she sees on shelves. Shoppers are reading ingredient decks in the aisle, and manufacturers are pulling dyes, artificial sweeteners and additives in response. She's also candid about the fight she's waging every day. TikTok trends spread faster than the science can correct them, and AI has made it worse: scammers have cloned her face and voice to sell weight-loss pills she has nothing to do with, and she's taken the fight to the police. Then there's the retail story. Isabelle explains how years of persistence, one Friday-afternoon meeting and a decision to strip the packaging entirely got her a single-store pilot at Maxi — and how that became two stores, then 28, then 100, and a finalist nod in Loblaw's small supplier program for her 100% woman-owned business. She talks frankly about the tension every entrepreneur faces between clean ingredients and an $8 price point, and why she runs thin margins to keep those meals accessible. Michael also hands her a magic wand: what would she do as Minister of Health? Her answer starts with kids, school meals and prevention. Then it's a rapid-fire round where she scores cane sugar, GLP-1s, protein, fibre and daily water intake out of ten — with some strong opinions on protein cookies and added-fibre chips. About Your Host, Michael LeBlanc 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. 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 fifth year in a row, the National Retail Federation has designated Michael as on their Top Retail Voices for 2025 and 2026. Thinkers 360 has named him on of the Top 50 global thought leaders in retail. 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.

    Dr. Isabelle Huot, Doctor of Nutrition, on Clean Label, Deepfakes and Building a Food Brand Inside Loblaw

  4. Sep 8 ·  Bonus

    Joe Fresh at 20: Irene Doody, SVP on Style, Value and Becoming Canada's #1 Apparel Destination

    Irene Doody, Senior Vice President, Joe Fresh at Loblaw Companies Limited, joins Michael LeBlanc on The FEED powered by Loblaw podcast for a conversation recorded live and in person at the third annual Loblaw Supplier Summit, where close to 2,500 suppliers and Loblaw leaders gathered at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre around partnership, value, innovation and trust. Joe Fresh turns 20 this year, and Irene has a rare vantage point on the entire arc. She was with the brand in the original days, when it lived in just 35 grocery stores as a convenience play built on surprise and delight — you came in for milk and cookies, and an irresistible product at an irresistible price ended up in the basket. Today Joe Fresh is in more than 300 stores, including standalone locations, and has an e-commerce business with over 10% penetration. Irene is also the brand's first female leader, a milestone she is justifiably proud of. Ask her what business Joe Fresh is in, and the answer is all three: style, value and convenience. She frames the offer as essentials for real life — clothes that help customers feel put together and self-express, priced so the decision is easy. Blending affordability and style, she says, is an art: knowing exactly where to put cost into a garment. That's what matters to customers, and understanding where and why people actually wear the clothes. In a market crowded with international competitors, Irene points to a consistent value proposition — essential style, exceptional value — plus two structural advantages: the Loblaw ecosystem and PC Optimum.  She and Michael dig into how product discovery has been rewired, from flyers and mass media to social influencers, customer advocacy, and the store apparel managers who may be the brand's most credible voices. Then Irene lays out the growth mandate: reigniting apparel at Loblaw, with an ambition to make Joe Fresh the number one destination for apparel in Canada. That means repositioning Joe Fresh to deliver even more value, adding national and licensed brands — yes, including Toronto Blue Jays — to fill white space and bring theatre back to the department, building out JoeFresh.com with virtual try-on and shop-the-look, and pushing accessibility everywhere: buy online pick up in store in more than 200 locations, and a DoorDash launch that made Joe Fresh the first apparel retailer in Canada on the platform.  Add personalized PC Optimum offers and exclusive event invitations, and the three-year picture gets genuinely interesting. Through it all, the roots hold: core essentials, real quality, and a definition of value that means the item is worth it. Style solutions, not runway trends. And above all, making it easy. About Your Host, Michael LeBlanc 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. 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 fifth year in a row, the National Retail Federation has designated Michael as on their Top Retail Voices for 2025 and 2026. Thinkers 360 has named him on of the Top 50 global thought leaders in retail. 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.

    Joe Fresh at 20: Irene Doody, SVP on Style, Value and Becoming Canada's #1 Apparel Destination

  5. Aug 31 ·  Bonus

    Greenhouse as Cornerstone: Joe Spano From Mucci Farms on the Future of the Canadian Food Supply

    Recorded live and in person at the third annual Loblaw Supplier Summit, this episode of The FEED powered by Loblaw brings you Joe Spano, Managing Partner and Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Mucci Farms — one of North America's most deeply vertically integrated greenhouse growers. Mucci Farms began as a small family farm in Kingsville, Ontario in the early 1960s, founded by Tony and Gino Mucci in the Leamington-Kingsville corridor that remains Canada's greenhouse hot spot. Joe joined nearly 29 years ago as employee number one of the sales and marketing company, and with his partners took the business through succession starting in 1999. Today Mucci supplies Loblaw with vine crops — beefsteak tomatoes, tomatoes on the vine, cucumbers in every format, lettuce and strawberries — from a controlled-environment operation that now includes a 105-acre indoor strawberry facility producing Canadian berries nearly twelve months a year, pesticide free and herbicide free. That project began as a challenge Loblaw brought to Mucci around 2015. Joe is candid about what constrains greenhouse growth in Canada: the capital barrier to entry keeps rising, and power, utilities, labour and the border are what keep him up at night. On affordability, he reframes the conversation from cost to value, pointing to sell-through approaching 100 percent on beefsteak tomatoes and to strawberries that arrive fresh enough that consumers eat every berry in the punnet — less waste on shelf and less waste at home. He also pulls back the curtain on something rare in agriculture: an in-house marketing team with graphic designers and printers, operating like an ad agency inside the building, working alongside global seed companies to trial and launch new varieties. Looking ahead, Mucci is trialling blackberries and raspberries, pushing further into leafy greens, and testing Asian vegetables including Asian eggplant and bok choy. On winning a Loblaw vendor of the year award against much larger competitors, Joe credits a relationship spanning nearly three decades that has never felt transactional — joint trips to Holland to research strawberry varieties, calls at 8 p.m. and 6 a.m., and category teams that feel like family. His advice to suppliers is refreshingly plain: be patient, think like a customer, and look at the business from the retailer's point of view. Joe closes on the long game — a new long-term ownership partnership with Cox Farms of Atlanta, part of Cox Enterprises, and a hope that greenhouse growing is remembered as a cornerstone of accessible Canadian food supply. About Your Host, Michael LeBlanc 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. 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 fifth year in a row, the National Retail Federation has designated Michael as on their Top Retail Voices for 2025 and 2026. Thinkers 360 has named him on of the Top 50 global thought leaders in retail. 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.

    Greenhouse as Cornerstone: Joe Spano From Mucci Farms on the Future of the Canadian Food Supply

  6. Aug 27 ·  Bonus

    Marcelo Braga, Co-Founder & Director, Frittos & Co., 2026 Small Supplier Partner of the Year

    There's a trophy on the table between us when this conversation starts, and that's the right place to begin. Recorded live and in person on stage at the third annual Loblaw Supplier Summit — the day at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre that brought close to 2,500 suppliers and Loblaw leaders together around partnership, value, innovation and trust — this episode of The FEED powered by Loblaw features Marcelo Braga, Co-Founder & Director of Frittos & Co., fresh off being named 2026 Small Supplier Partner of the Year.  Marcelo arrived in Canada from Brazil in 2019 and settled in London, Ontario. He met his eventual business partner, Wallace Franca, through the local Brazilian community — and discovered that Wallace's father-in-law, an obstetrician back in Brazil, had delivered Marcelo's first daughter. That coincidence turned two families into one, and eventually into a company.  The product is coxinha — the Brazilian chicken croquette that Marcelo calls the country's most popular snack — alongside cheese balls, churros filled with dulce de leche and chocolate, and a Canadian-facing line that includes pulled pork and pizza bites. The dough is the Brazilian part. The flavours are increasingly Canadian. What separates this story from most food startup stories is the sequencing. Marcelo and Wallace didn't begin at a farmers' market.  They built a compliant incubator facility first, sorted GS1 packaging and nutrition facts before anyone asked, and then went looking for customers. So when a Real Canadian Superstore manager in Windsor flagged the product and Loblaw's local food program came to visit, the answer wasn't "give us six months." It was yes. As Marcelo puts it: be ready for the opportunity before the opportunity arrives. He closes with advice for food entrepreneurs at any stage. Passion and consistency, because plenty of people will tell you the category is already crowded. The right team, because you can't scale alone. And relationships — he still drives to every new store that lists the brand, just to shake the manager's hand and say, I'm the father of this product. A warm, honest conversation about getting from a good idea to the national freezer aisle. About Your Host, Michael LeBlanc 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. 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 fifth year in a row, the National Retail Federation has designated Michael as on their Top Retail Voices for 2025 and 2026. Thinkers 360 has named him on of the Top 50 global thought leaders in retail. 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.

    Marcelo Braga, Co-Founder & Director, Frittos & Co., 2026 Small Supplier Partner of the Year

  7. Aug 21 ·  Bonus

    Delivering Value: Rohit Sriram, SVP, eCommerce and Loyalty, Loblaw Digital

    Recorded live and in person at the third annual Loblaw Supplier Summit, where nearly 2,500 suppliers and Loblaw leaders filled the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Rohit Sriram, Senior Vice President, eCommerce and Loyalty at Loblaw Digital, joins Michael LeBlanc on The FEED powered by Loblaw for a wide-ranging conversation on the state of Canadian online shopping and where it goes next. Rohit oversees online businesses across food, beauty and apparel — Loblaws, No Frills, Real Canadian Superstore, Shoppers Drug Mart and Joe Fresh — along with PC Optimum. He brings a practitioner's view to a subject Michael has been close to since selling the world's first pair of Levi's online in 1998. The two open on the big picture: Canada's long-standing reputation as an e-commerce laggard. Rohit agrees the label was earned, though the gap with the United States has narrowed considerably, while Asian markets remain far ahead, particularly in the grocery category. COVID, he explains, didn't just spike demand, it reset the floor. Penetration settled at two to three times pre-pandemic levels and stayed there, with Canada now hovering around nine to nine and a half percent overall. Online grocery remains underpenetrated but is accelerating quickly, and in certain regions and banners, penetration is already north of ten percent. Why does online grocery live or die on the produce pick, while apparel hinges on brand, fit and feel? Why did Canadians embrace click and collect first, and why is delivery now the fastest growing part of the business? Rohit walks through the "moments" framework his teams use to think about channel choice, a deliberate mindset shift away from treating e-commerce as a separate business and toward the reality that customers don't think in channels at all. They think about shopping, moving between store discovery and online convenience and expecting a seamless handoff. They dig into value — not just price, but time savings, easy returns and the delivery fee that remains a sticking point for many shoppers. Rohit makes a pointed argument: online was once a premium service sold at a premium price, and retailers no longer have that excuse. On speed, Michael revisits his own public bet that one hour delivery would stay niche. Rohit's read is that same-day has become table stakes, sub-thirty-minute rapid delivery isn't yet the Canadian norm, and the Asian race to ten-minute delivery ultimately landed on the insight that anything faster than thirty minutes wasn't really needed. Loblaw is still investing, with a DoorDash partnership serving dense urban, late night and over-the-counter demand. The episode closes on technology and AI, and how Rohit's team separates signal from noise: start with the problem, demand differentiated value, design a test, and scale only when the customer benefit is real. About Your Host, Michael LeBlanc 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. 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 fifth year in a row, the National Retail Federation has designated Michael as on their Top Retail Voices for 2025 and 2026. Thinkers 360 has named him on of the Top 50 global thought leaders in retail. 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.

    Delivering Value: Rohit Sriram, SVP, eCommerce and Loyalty, Loblaw Digital

  8. Aug 14 ·  Bonus

    Inside Loblaw's Food Waste Elimination Playbook with Jonathan Carroll, SVP, Real Canadian Superstore

    Recorded on location at the third annual Loblaw Supplier Summit — which brought nearly 2,500 suppliers and Loblaw leaders to the Metro Toronto Convention Centre around partnership, value, innovation and trust — this episode of The FEED powered by Loblaw finds host Michael LeBlanc sitting down with Jonathan Carroll, Senior Vice President, Real Canadian Superstore Operations, to explore where food waste, food security and value intersect. Jonathan oversees 182 Real Canadian Superstore locations and chairs Loblaw's enterprise-wide food waste committee, a cross-banner group that pulls Superstore, No Frills, Maxi and the rest of the 1,700-store fleet onto a single playbook. His framing is blunt: food waste isn't solely a sustainability line item; it's a cost — packaging, transportation, labour and lost product stacked behind every item that never reaches a customer. But the conversation moves quickly past table stakes. Jonathan walks through the donation network Loblaw has built with Food Banks Canada, Food Banks Quebec and Second Harvest, including the Second Harvest app that lets store operators list short-coded product — food approaching its best-before date — so food bank teams can shop it daily based on what their community actually needs. LeBlanc calls it a shadow supply chain running parallel to the commercial one, powered by volunteers coast to coast. Carroll connects it to Feed More Families, the pledge backed by self-checkout donations, and to the Greater Vancouver Food Bank's freeze-dried strawberry programme, where diverted Loblaw product is transformed and sent to communities that rarely see fresh fruit. Then there's the consumer-facing side. Carroll has been working with Flash Food since its first pilots in Sarnia and Oakville, and he explains how the daily store walk pulls short-coded bakery and produce onto the app at a discount for pickup at customer service. The newer wrinkle: flash-freezing fresh meat and seafood before expiry to extend shelf life, so shoppers can buy lean ground beef at fifty percent off and stock the freezer. He shares a favourite — the five-dollar produce bag, five pounds of surprise produce — and the story of a shopper who pulled out a dragon fruit and came back the next week to tell her store manager. A Too Good to Go pilot is underway in Ottawa and downtown Toronto. Upstream, AI-powered forecasting is sharpening ordering accuracy, and the whole system points at one target: zero food waste to landfill by 2030. Carroll is confident the team gets there — and says the real win arrives when the rest of Canadian retail shares the same best practices. Asked which motivates him most — sustainability, efficiency or food security — Carroll doesn't hesitate: food security. Getting good food out to good people is the whole point. About Your Host, Michael LeBlanc 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. 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 fifth year in a row, the National Retail Federation has designated Michael as on their Top Retail Voices for 2025 and 2026. Thinkers 360 has named him on of the Top 50 global thought leaders in retail. 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.

    Inside Loblaw's Food Waste Elimination Playbook with Jonathan Carroll, SVP, Real Canadian Superstore
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Trailers

About

Greetings and welcome to season two of The FEED, powered by Loblaw podcast! We conceived of The FEED as an opportunity to showcase thought leaders, taste makers, innovative brands and leaders, who are making a difference in the grocery and health industries and helping Canadians Live Life Well. We’re off to a great start, wrapping Season one and 2025 with a powerful interview with Benjamin Tal, Deputy Chief Economist from CIBC. In this, our second season, we’re talking with amazing entrepreneurs and thought leaders from coast-to-coast - from The Handpie Company out of PEI to celebrating 42 years of innovation and natural beauty with Parissa in Vancouver - and plenty more in between. So be sure and follow us on your favourite podcasting platform and our YouTube channel, and stay tuned for another season of The FEED, powered by Loblaw!

Information

  • Creator
    Michael LeBlanc
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    28
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2025-2026 Maven Media Productions
  • Show Website
    The FEED powered by Loblaw

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