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GOURMET NEWS NOVEMBER 2018 www.gourmetnews.com NEWS & NOTES 8 IBM Food Trust Expands Blockchain Network IBM has announced growing adoption of its food supply chain network, IBM Food Trust. The blockchain-based cloud network offers participating retailers, suppliers, growers and food industry providers with data from across the food ecosystem to enable greater traceability, transparency and efficiency. The network is now generally available after 18 months in testing, during which millions of individual food products have been tracked by retailers and suppliers. The ecosystem of network participants continues to grow, and today, leading global retailer Carrefour announced they will use the IBM Food Trust blockchain network to strengthen their food excellence actions. As one of the world's leading retailers with more than 12,000 stores in 33 countries, Carrefour stores will initially use the solu- tion to highlight consumers' confidence in a number of Carrefour-branded products. As a commitment of the retailer's Act for Food program, the solution is expected to expand to all Carrefour brands worldwide by 2022. "Being a founding member of the IBM Food Trust platform is a great opportunity for Carrefour to accelerate and widen the integration of blockchain technology to our products in order to provide our clients with safe and undoubted traceability," said Laurent Vallée, General Secretary of Car- refour. "This is a decisive step in the roll- out of Act for Food, our global program of concrete initiatives in favor of the food transition." Using blockchain for trusted transac- tions, food can be quickly traced back to its source in as little as a few seconds instead of days or weeks. Unlike traditional data- bases, the attributes of blockchain and the ability to permission data, enables network members to gain a new level of trusted in- formation. Transactions are endorsed by multiple parties, leading to an immutable single version of the truth. "The currency of trust today is trans- parency and achieving it in the area of food safety happens when responsibility is shared," Bridget van Kralingen, Senior Vice President, IBM Global Industries, Clients, Platforms and Blockchain. "That collabora- tive approach is how the members of IBM Food Trust have shown blockchain can strengthen transparency and drive mean- ingful enhancements to food traceability. Ultimately that provides business benefits for participants and a better and safer prod- uct for consumers." A Growing Ecosystem The members of IBM Food Trust have helped build a powerful global business so- lution that is interoperable and built on open standards. This is designed to enable organizations in the food industry to run their businesses more effectively and pro- vide safer food at lower costs. In addition to Carrefour, organizations joining IBM Food Trust include the coop- erative Topco Associates, LLC, representing 49 members, reaching over 15,000 stores and 65 million weekly customers; retailer- owned cooperative Wakefern, representing 50 member companies and 349 stores and suppliers including BeefChain, Dennick Fruit Source, Scoular and Smithfield. "Blockchain holds the potential to help us be more transparent and transform how the food industry works by speeding up in- vestigations into contaminated food, au- thenticating the origin of food, and provid- ing insights about the conditions and pathway the food traveled to identify op- portunities to maximize shelf life and re- duce losses due to spoilage," said Ed Treacy, Vice President of Supply Chain Efficiencies at the Produce Marketing Association. These newest participants join a move- ment that is accelerating among retailers and suppliers. For example, Walmart, an early proponent of blockchain technology, recently announced that it will begin re- quiring its leafy green suppliers to capture digital, end-to-end traceability event infor- mation using IBM Food Trust. Beyond the goal of making food safer, the IBM Food Trust network and accompany- ing solutions have expanded to focus on optimizing the food supply. This includes generating insights on product freshness, reducing waste and making the supply chain more collaborative and transparent. IBM is working with services and tech- nology providers to contribute important supply chain, provenance, testing and sen- sor data to the blockchain ecosystem. With IBM Food Trust, hardware, software and technology companies can write transac- tion data directly onto the blockchain net- work to provide valuable insights. "The power of IBM Food Trust is in bringing together not only retailers and suppliers but also the rest of the ecosystem touching our food supply," said Natalie Dyenson, Vice President, Food Safety & Quality, Dole. "For example, Dole is work- ing with Centricity, a grower-owned part- ner, to connect audit data to the blockchain by leveraging the Trellis framework as a standard for the produce industry, using ex- isting formats and processes. By simplifying on-farm and front-office reporting and put- ting data on the blockchain, IBM Food Trust has helped Dole unlock the value of compliance data across our suppliers and partners in a cost-effective way." Governance for Shared a Network IBM Food Trust uses a decentralized model to allow multiple participating members of the food supply chain – from growers to suppliers to retailers – to share food origin details, processing data and shipping infor- mation on a permissioned blockchain net- work. Each node on the blockchain is controlled by a separate entity, and all data on the blockchain is encrypted. The decen- tralized features of the network enable all parties to work together to ensure the data is trusted. As one of the largest and most active en- terprise blockchain networks in production to date, IBM Food Trust members pio- neered a comprehensive governance model for the network to help ensure that the rights and information of all participants will be managed and protected appropri- ately. The governance model ensures every member abides by the same set of rules. Or- ganizations that upload data continue to own the data, and the data owner is the only one that can provide permission for data to be seen or shared. Important blockchain network management consid- erations have been addressed, including data entry, membership, interoperability and security and hardware requirements, while providing a consistent way to stan- dardize data. GN Gas Station Convenience Store Goes Gourmet Bona Design Lab, a global retail design and consulting firm based in New York City, has created the design for the new U.S. concept for the branded Shell Select con- venience store, which opened in Louisville, Ken- tucky, September 5. According to vet- eran store designer and retail consult- ant Joseph Bona, President of Bona Design Lab, his team was tasked with helping Shell demon- strate its commitment to supporting its wholesale network in the United States through a strong, competitive convenience retail format. The result echoes, in small scale, many features we'd expect to see in an upscale grocery retailer. The Louisville store is operated by Estepp Energy, a Lex- ington, Kentucky-based wholesaler of Shell-branded motor fuel. "Our mandate was to take the Shell Se- lect global brand and adapt it to the U.S. market while creating a design that com- municates the wholesaler's local roots in Louisville," Bona explained. "We're proud to be one of the national and local suppliers that Shell Oil Products US selected to help them with this initiative." Louisville was tapped as an area to roll out the Shell Select conven- ience store concept because of its vibrant local culture and reputation for unique food and beverage offers. "We are excited to offer a new and unique experi- ence for our customers," said Gyongyver Menesi- Bondar, Head of Conven- ience Retail for Shell Oil Products US. "Shell Select is different from traditional convenience stores in that it provides high-quality, fresh, culinary-inspired food and beverage op- tions for customers who are on the go, and it also provides the ability to get in and out at your own pace without being slowed and without feeling rushed." The thrust of the overall design, Bona said, was to create a strong food and bev- erage presentation that includes local touches and products. That effort begins with the exterior, a strikingly modern piece of architecture that incorporates an upscale outdoor seating area covered by an awning and screened in by greenery, with signage that invites customers to "Have a Seat and Chill." "We wanted to make sure that the archi- tecture, including the outdoor seating, sig- nals to people that this is a destination for food and beverage, with more than just the traditional convenience store categories," Bona elaborated. "It is intended to disrupt people's usual expectations of what they'll find at a gas station." Inside the store, layout and design work together to put the focus on the consumable offerings. Cus- tomers entering the store immedi- ately find self- serve beverages situated to their left, while facing an array of food products that fill the back wall. Although the store footprint measures 2,221 square feet, an open ceiling and the layout help create a space that feels spa- cious and is easy to navigate. The interior treatment makes use of the Shell Select palette of colors and materi- als, but reinterprets them to underscore the central role of food and beverage, Bona said. Natural dark materials and warm wood tones work with LED lighting to create visual interest with highlights and contrasts within an overall ambience that is warm and inviting. The effect is a far cry from the harsh fluorescent glare typical of older-generation convenience stores. The interior design is further distin- guished by a clean, understated approach to departmental graphics. "We stayed away from the hectic graphic treatments and vivid colors that charac- terize a lot of older conven- ience store designs," Bona commented. "We wanted to keep the food and other merchandise center stage and used lighting and fix- tures to achieve that." A notable exception is a mural created by a local artist on one wall that presents a stylized map of Louisville, highlighting some of the iconic features the city is known for. "This was the one area where we used graphics to create a local feeling," Bona ex- plained. "We wanted to make sure that the people of Louisville know this is a retailer with local roots who understands their tastes." GN

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