United Natural Foods is adding fresh meal kits and flash-frozen meals to its offerings to meet increased consumer demand for at-home meals. "With consumers continuing to favor eating at home versus away, retailers are looking to offer delicious and effortless products to time-challenged consumers that replicate the restaurant experience at budget-friendly pricing," said Jody Barrick, UNFI's vice president of bakery, deli and prepared foods.

Independent distributors can set themselves apart by using the service life cycle and value map concepts to determine the true value of services they offer, writes consultant Scott Benfield. "Properly defined, positioned and marketed services are financially profitable and customers realize their value," Benfield writes.

Digital twins, natural language processing and hyperautomation are all poised to reshape cold food chain logistics, writes Sunil Kardam, head of logistics and supply chain at Gramener. "These technologies are able to foresee obstacles, overcome inefficiencies and optimize even the most difficult of processes, from the warehouse right up until last-mile delivery," Kardam writes.

More companies are investing in warehouse automation to reap benefits such as improved efficiency and agility, writes Daniel Newman, principal analyst at Futurum Research. In particular, "warehouse automation can be used not just to replace, but to augment the capacity of current staff so that they can focus on more important things, be it business strategy, customer service inquiries, or sales," Newman writes.

From the beginning of next year, business-to-business companies will no longer be partially exempt from the California Consumer Privacy Act. Trishla Ostwal examines what B2B marketers need to know about data compliance ahead of the changing rules.

Ensuring collaboration among the sales team and customer success team is an important element of client renewal efforts, writes Nikola Mijic, CEO and co-founder of Matik. Investing time in deeper learning about a client's business and industry landscape can make a big difference, Mijic asserts, offering six other steps for success.

Leaders who expect perfection from themselves or employees can manage the stress and negativity of such beliefs by acknowledging progress, better managing their emotions and fostering noncompetitive relationships, write business professors Anna Carmella G. Ocampo, Jun Gu and Mariano Heyden. "Ultimately, we tend to perform better at work -- and can even be happier -- when we are consistently 'good enough' instead of sporadically perfect," they write.

Avoid leadership blunders by setting goals, defining what progress looks like, questioning your assumptions and bringing the best parts of your home-self to work with you, writes Dan Rockwell. "The bigger the gap between your home-self and your work-self, the more drudgery you experience," Rockwell writes.

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