From Albertsons to Artificial Plants? Suzanne Long on Sustainability, Reinvention & Fauxliage

Hello, everyone.

Welcome back.

This is omnitalk Retail.

I'm Chris Walton.

And I'm Anne Mazinga.

And we are coming to you live from the World Retail Congress at the Vusion Group's booth right off the grand ballroom foyer, I think.

Right, Ann, you better be pronouncing things the right way.

We are guests in this country.

We must use the right words.

French words in an English speaking country.

Yes, exactly right.

Exactly right.

Well, without further ado, I want to introduce the women standing in between us.

That is, I'm gonna hold here for a second.

There we go.

All right, so without further ado, I want to introduce the woman standing between us.

This is Suzanne Long, the former Chief sustainability and Transformation Officer at Albertsons.

Welcome to omnitalk.

We've been trying to get you for a while.

It's great to finally make this happen.

Thank you so much.

It has been a whirlwind trying to get this scheduled, but I'm so glad to be here.

Yes.

And I should also say the CEO of a new startup called Foliage as well, which we're going to talk to her about.

Yes.

Well, Suzanne, you've been to World Retail Congress before.

What do you love about coming to the show?

What drives you across the pond to London for this show?

Yeah, there's a couple things I think that are in particular are valuable about the conference.

The first is that the level of people who attend is extremely high.

And many other events that I've gone to, those sea level folks maybe do a.

They're on a panel or they have a speaking engagement, and then they really do exit stage left, and you never actually get the interaction, the conversation, the networking.

And at World Retail Congress, what I found is everyone stays for the networking.

And not only that, but there are really close friendships among people because they come back year after year.

And so you're looking for those people, you feel like you can talk to them about things that, you know, I'm CEO, it's lonely at the top.

Right.

And so finding those peers and finding that you're.

You've got your family to come back to, I think is one of the things that's just incredibly valuable.

Yeah.

As a former retail executive, had I known about this show, I definitely would have been here.

Because you make all these connections, it's just amazing.

So take that.

Word of advice, fans.

All right, so you just left Albertsons.

You've jumped into the world of entrepreneurship.

A glutton for punishment, I'm guessing, which we want to hear about.

Absolutely.

Like I said, I Want to hear more about why you're doing that.

But before we do that, let's talk about just general, general trends that you see as you leave Albertsons.

How would you sum up the state of the industry in terms of sustainability?

Let's start there first.

Yeah, I mean, I think, obviously, in general, I think in the United States, sustainability has taken a backseat, and that has a lot to do with the change in administration and change in policies.

But I don't believe that that's actually stopping the work of companies themselves.

I think in some cases it's slowing it.

But I think companies understand that there is going to be a problem, whether it is because they are legally required to do things, whether it is that the consumer demands that they do it, whether it's that their costs are going up and they need to figure out how to take packaging out of the process.

You know, there is a greater demand for natural ingredients or at least less manufactured ingredients.

And those.

Although many people would not consider those sustainability topics, they very much are.

And then I see also a continued focus on, I would say, sustainability or resilience of the supply chain.

People are understanding that the various climate impacts that we're seeing are impacting whether a crop can still be grown in a certain location or whether there's a catastrophic event and realizing that they need backstops for their supply chain.

And I see all of that work continuing.

So even though people may not call it sustainability, I see very much a continued trend to address those areas.

Suzanne, what do you recommend, then, that the retailers here, or retailers listening, who are following along, what do you recommend they do first, from, like, an internal perspective, to prioritize some of these sustainability initiatives right now or at least keep them going so that they're prepared when some of that regulation comes to bear.

And.

And then how would you recommend that they communicate that to the consumer as well?

Yeah, well, I think it really depends on which retailers you're talking to.

Right.

So in the Europe and parts of Asia, even parts of northern Africa, this is already a known topic and one that is important and isn't.

It's not new.

People believe it's already got to be as part of your business strategy.

Yeah.

So, but to those companies, primarily American companies or also in emerging markets, I think that the most important thing is it has to be part of your.

The way you operate your business.

If sustainability is something you add on, it will never survive because it will never be at the top of the A list.

It will always be on the top of the B list, unless it provides business benefit in some other way.

So, for example, if you take plastic out of your packaging and you have less packaging in general, and it's less cost and it's better for the environment if you can find ways of wasting less food as you produce it, it is better for your bottom line and it is better for the planet.

So I think there's all of these instances where people think these two things are disconnected.

But really, if you're doing it and it's better for your business, there's a lot of ways in which it's better for the planet and the people who live on it.

But it has to be connected to some kind of ROI or some kind of savings in order to.

Absolutely does.

And I.

I think the topic of resilience is particularly important because when we look at where crops are grown and livestock and different issues affecting our food, we need to make sure that we have ways of backing that up.

We saw that during COVID We saw that during the flu that hit the bird population in the US and the price of eggs.

So we really need to take it seriously.

Right.

It's like we just had someone on our podcast the other day from GS1 saying, traceability doesn't create ROI, but visibility does.

Knowing where things are in the supply chain ultimately helps you and improves things.

All right, let's talk about the other side of the ledger.

Transformation.

Yes.

Okay.

So is that a function of sustainability needing to be something that is transformative inside a retail culture, or is there more to it than that?

What a great question.

Transformation, as we saw it in the job that I had was really about transforming the culture of the frontline workforce.

That employee engagement is going to continue to be a way that we can deliver a level of service and engagement for our customers that many of our online competitors could never provide.

You can order something from Amazon.

Good luck trying to find a person to talk to you.

Right.

You can have something dropped off at your door through a delivery service, but they don't necessarily know that your kid is having a birthday and finding some other way to help you celebrate, or that you like the meat cut a certain way and that you've come in week after week for years, and that it, in many cases, a grocery store is the only interaction that some people have with another person in the course of a day.

And the thing is, we all have to eat.

It is the great denominator.

So the idea of engaging your workforce so that they stay and that they treat each other and your customers in a way that your customers Will never think about shopping somewhere else.

That's transformation.

Wow.

I did not expect you to go in that direction.

I know most people don't.

Wow.

So, gosh, you had a lot under your umbrella then I did in your former role.

Okay, so I made the joke.

You're a glutton for punishment.

I guess you are kind of, in a way.

So why now the pivot to doing your own thing.

Yeah, well, I mean, I had a great gig going.

I mean, I worked for Albertsons for 18 years.

It was a fabulous company in many different roles.

But I have had an entrepreneurial itch for about six years.

I had an idea and I kept thinking in six years it would go away, but I now just feel I have to scratch it.

It's like been a little puppy following me around, looking at my heels.

We'll exchange stories after.

Yes.

And I am hitting a new decade in my life this coming month.

And I had a college professor who's a dear, dear friend of mine say, what's going to make the next decade of your life better than the last decade of your life?

And there's always a knowing that, knowing that you have aging parents, knowing that your health may not improve, knowing that you have kids in high school and you can't move whatever you're knowing that is right.

And so I had to consider that.

And he said that the last 30 years of his career made the first 30 years of his career seem insignificant.

Wow.

And it made me think, what if I'm just getting warmed up?

What if we're all just getting warmed up right at the age where we start talking about retirement?

Could actually be the launch for something else, a reinvention.

And so I guess I am a glutton for punishment.

So tell us about Foley.

Yeah, tell us about this startup.

Well, the way I would describe it is that there are and I'm just looking around the room here, if I asked you to name a brand of phone or camera or soda or a pen or juice, you can name a brand.

But if I said name a brand of artificial plants and flowers, I would not do it.

Nope.

Nope.

Now people might be able to tell me where they'd buy them, but people can't tell me a brand in the moment that I had this idea six years ago, the name Foliage came to me, which is Faux X.

So Faux Foliage.

And it is the only brand name I can think of where it is.

The entire made up name is what it actually is.

It's a multi billion dollar industry and nobody can name a brand and I see it everywhere, and the quality of what most people use is terrible.

But I have managed to get good stuff and my standards are high.

Yes.

So I'm excited to bring that to market, to bring the brand to consumers, but then scale it commercially.

Okay.

Shopping centers, hotels, restaurants, all the places where you wouldn't think to necessarily put it, but there's great opportunity.

Yeah.

As a former home furnishings head of merchandising at Target, I think you might be onto something.

Yeah, I might be onto something.

Yeah.

There's kind of an untapped market there as you're talking about that.

That's interesting.

That's interesting.

Well, thanks so much for being with us.

Your entrepreneurship story is not that different than ours in terms of how we jumped feet first into this whole.

So thanks again for being with us.

Great that we were finally able to do this.

We're going to be here all day long doing interviews from the World Retail Congress.

And until next time, Ann, be careful out there.