Today’s post is by Ronald D. Southard, CEO at SafeSourcing Inc.

How does your company keep abreast of the ever-changing industry landscape in our food industry? What are commodities doing, what are current supply issues and other trending information.

The Food Industry Report is a weekly report on food industry events relevant to producers. The Food Industry Report is written by The Food Institute, which is a nonprofit organization founded in 1928, The American Institute of Food Distribution’s (The Food Institute) purpose is providing information to better equip the food production industry and it’s practices. Below are three articles of interest from this week.

1. Amazon’s Grubhub+ Offering Signals New Approach to Loyalty
2. High Food Prices Could Persist for Three More Years
3. Locavorism’ Trend Gaining Steam Despite Misconceptions

SafeSourcing is an eprocurement company that operates across multiple industries. We endeavor to act as an additional source of industry information on our website with our SafeSourcing white papers, daily blogs, SafeSourcing Wiki. We also monitor daily Industry Updates and Alerts To learn more, please contact a SafeSourcing customer services associate.

Sources: The Food Institute

Today’s post is by Ronald D. Southard, CEO at SafeSourcing Inc.

The recent pandemic and resulting supply chain impact has caused so many new retail format modifications, are you sure that your contractors are following LEED certification standards and principles.

The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building rating system is the nationally accepted benchmark for design, construction, and operation of high performance green buildings. LEED is an ecology-oriented building certification program run under the auspices of the U.S. green building Council (USGBC). LEED concentrates its efforts on improving performance across five key areas of environmental and human health: energy efficiency, indoor environmental quality, materials selection, sustainable site development, and water savings.

LEED has special rating systems that apply to all kinds of structures, including schools, retail and healthcare facilities. Rating systems are available for new construction and major renovations as well as existing buildings. The program is designed to inform and guide all kinds of professionals who work with structures to create or convert spaces to environmental sustainability, including architects, real estate professionals, facility managers, engineers, interior designers, landscape architects, construction managers, private sector executives and government officials.

On its Web site, the USGBC says that LEED defines “a nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high-performance Green Buildings” and “provides building owners and operators with the tools they need to have an immediate and measurable impact on their buildings’ performance.” According to the American Institute of Architects, the 69 LEED points that make up the program’s specific design points and considerations can be reviewed in a two-hour meeting, during which time the design team and the owner can decide what level of LEED compliance is desirable for their building project.

State and local governments around the United States are adopting LEED for public buildings of all kinds, and LEED initiatives at the US Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy and State drive activity at the federal level. In addition, various types of LEED projects are currently underway in over forty other countries, including Canada, Brazil, India, and Mexico.

If you’d like to learn more about how SafeSourcing can assist in properly helping to insure your contractors are adhering to all LEED standards,  please contact a SafeSourcing customer services associate.

Source: https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatacenter/definition/LEED-Leadership-in-Energy-and-Environmental-Design

Today’s post is by Patrick Quinn is a Procurement Specialist at SafeSourcing Inc

Lock in your mortgage rates everyone because the gravy train has officially ended. The Fed has announced the biggest increase in interest rates since 1994 in an all-out effort to reduce inflation. So now, we can all expect to see the usual activity during times of increased interest rates. Fewer auto loans, lower mortgage limits, higher credit card rates, and among the consumer commodities hits come more difficult aspects such as lower hiring rates as spending slows down.

This long-term strategy is sound economic theory, but not one without its struggles. Since business growth will be reduced because of reduced consumer spending, the focus now shifts from revenue growth to spend reduction to weather the storm. Long term contracts at a competitive rate are now far more valuable than jumping from short term contract to short term contract seeking out world-beating prices. Fortunately, the Fed only seems interested in increasing the rates as little as possible to mitigate the subsequent unemployment as it recognizes the worse of two evils. Unfortunately, that does mean incremental rate increases for the foreseeable future. So, lock in your contracts yesterday, everyone, it is going to be a bumpy ride.

To help secure your next contract, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.