Facing the Future

The State of the Industry Reports at the 2025 FEDA Annual Executive Leadership Conference will offer real-world examples of how distributors and manufacturers are starting to work together to develop ways to fuel growth while creating more value for customers.

This year’s State of the Industry presenters are Mark Rossi, founder and CEO of Avanti Restaurant Solutions, a distributor based in Costa Mesa, California, that ranks No. 29 on Foodservice Equipment & Supplies Magazine’s Distribution Giants list; and Erik Lampe, president and CEO of The Vollrath Company, a 150-year-old foodservice equipment manufacturer based in Wisconsin. The two will share the perspectives of a dealer and a supplier on current conditions in the industry and how it is likely to evolve in the coming years. Additionally, as co-chair and member, respectively, of FEDA’s Future of Distribution Council (FDC), they will highlight the group’s current activities, which are focused on developing a more resilient and responsive “smart” supply chain for the foodservice equipment and supplies industry.

Rossi and Lampe will provide insights into the council’s work on Supply Chain 2040, a concept of how various factors and technological advances will reshape supply chains over the next 15 years. Some of the forces expected to drive that evolution include:

• Developed countries are experiencing demographic shifts such as falling birth rates and aging workforces, which are creating labor shortages, increasing health care costs and straining pension systems.
• Geopolitical instability and trade fragmentation have led to more tariffs and sanctions, prompting some companies to reshore and localize their supply chains.
• The growing scarcity of materials and other resources combined with overburdened transportation infrastructure are contributing to more regulatory pressures and supply chain disruption.
• The increasing reliance on AI agents to automate high-cognition tasks has caused companies to restructure how they conduct creative, legal, financial, and research and development work, giving rise to new concerns over intellectual property, misinformation and employment disruption.

As those forces become more pronounced, the FDC has identified several areas where distributors and manufacturers might shift strategies to get ahead of any correlating disruption. Some of the solutions that have been discussed are:

• Redundant sourcing and inventory buffers
• The use of AI and digital twins, a virtual representation of a real world object, system or process, for scenario planning and disruption forecasting
• Autonomous mobile robots, drones and AI-driven optimization
• Automation of procurement, forecasting and contract management through AI
• Cognitive automation replacing dashboards with real-time decision support
• Satellite-based internet and tracking improving global visibility
• AI-augmented supply chain control towers and analytics

The ongoing discussions around these disruptive forces and potential solutions are being facilitated by Chad Autry, a researcher and professor of supply chain management at the University of Tennessee’s Haslam College of Business. Autry will expand on these ideas in a presentation immediately following the State of the Industry session.

Just as the State of the Industry Reports provide a foundation for Autry’s presentation, they will also set the stage for other FEDA conference sessions, including the Industry Roundtable Discussions and the Tech Talk presentations. To gain the full value of the conference experience, attendees won’t want to miss the State of the Industry Reports.