Shaping the Future - Together

I had an amazing time in Sun Valley, Idaho last month attending the Global Foodservice Hospitality Exchange. Over 450 foodservice operators and industry leaders attended the event. Our goal was to use our time together to ideate on how the best ideas and innovations could positively influence the future of the foodservice industry.

The theme this year was Shaping the Future Together, and while I know that we will spend months and even years thinking about the Shaping the Future part of that theme, it’s honestly the Together part that has my attention at the moment.

Our industry has been through a lot. But when I look at these pictures from the event, I can’t help but well up with pride for what we have all accomplished over these past years. We are so fortunate to be surrounded by the most passionate and resilient workforce -- with the willingness to persevere and think and act differently, even while the ground was shifting beneath our feet.

It shouldn’t have been a big deal to travel across the country with a large group of colleagues to strategize about what the future of our industry could look like. But it’s important for us to pause for a moment and be grateful for how we got here. We could have fallen apart. We could have given up. We could have refused to support each other.

But we didn’t. We came Together. 

I'll leave you with this great video of operators answering this question:

'What is one future-forward trend that every operator should get on board with?'

Photo Credit: Tessa Sheehan Photography