Grocery Competition & Real Estate, Canadian Food Bank Crisis and guest Per Bank, President & CEO, Loblaw Companies Limited

The Food Professor

On this episode of The Food Professor Podcast, presented by Caddle, hosts Michael LeBlanc and Sylvain Charlebois bring on an influential guest: Per Bank, President and CEO of Loblaw Companies Limited.

Bank, who joined Loblaw in late 2023 after a diverse career in Europe, shares his perspectives on Canadian retail, competition, and his vision for the company's future.

In the news, we discuss Per's recent op-ed in The Globe and Mail, where he challenges current competition practices and addresses "false narratives" about retail consolidation, suggesting that Loblaw is open to removing specific property controls—if other industry leaders do the same.

We explore other key food industry stories, including McDonald's recent health crisis linked to onion contamination, resulting in a steep traffic decline, especially in Colorado, and the CFIA's findings on safety in plant-based milk facilities.

Additional segments cover legislation updates with Bill C-282, the HungerCount2024 report, Second Harvest's analysis on food waste, and the ongoing issue of shrinkage and theft in the food industry, featuring a quirky story of Jamie Oliver's "grate cheese robbery" campaign.

About Per

Per Bank

President and Chief Executive Officer

Loblaw Companies Limited

Per Bank is President and Chief Executive Officer of Loblaw Companies Limited, Canada’s food and pharmacy leader, and the country’s largest retailer and private-sector employer. In this role, which he assumed in November 2023, Mr. Bank is responsible for executing Loblaw’s corporate strategy and overseeing all aspects of the business’ day-to-day operations.

Under Mr. Bank’s leadership, Loblaw operates a network of 2,500 stores, pharmacies and e-commerce options, featuring many of Canada’s favorite and most-trusted brands, including President’s Choice, no name, Loblaws, Shoppers Drug Mart, No Frills, Real Canadian Superstore, T&T, Joe Fresh, PC Express and PC Financial. The company’s loyalty program, PC Optimum, is world-renowned with more than 16 million members. Its supply chain and technology networks are among the country’s most robust.

With a background in engineering and industrial businesses, Mr. Bank’s expertise is exhaustive and undeniable. For over 20 years, he’s acted as Chief Executive Officer for a wide range of consumer and retail companies across various global markets. Prior to joining Loblaw, he was CEO of Salling Group A/S with operations in Denmark, Germany, Poland; CEO of Tesco Hungary; and CEO of Coop Norden’s operations in Sweden, Norway, Denmark. He has also held senior leadership positions with Mars and Danfoss.

Mr. Bank leads with purpose, values authenticity, and emphasizes open and honest two-way communication with both employee and customers. He is a decisive executive that brings unique voices and perspectives to every discussion.

Mr. Bank is a native of Denmark, and is married with two university-aged children.

The Food Professor #podcast is presented by Caddle.

About Us

Dr. Sylvain Charlebois is a Professor in food distribution and policy in the Faculties of Management and Agriculture at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He is also the Senior Director of the Agri-food Analytics Lab, also located at Dalhousie University. Before joining Dalhousie, he was affiliated with the University of Guelph’s Arrell Food Institute, which he co-founded. Known as “The Food Professor”, his current research interest lies in the broad area of food distribution, security and safety. Google Scholar ranks him as one of the world's most cited scholars in food supply chain management, food value chains and traceability.

He has authored five books on global food systems, his most recent one published in 2017 by Wiley-Blackwell entitled “Food Safety, Risk Intelligence and Benchmarking”. He has also published over 500 peer-reviewed journal articles in several academic publications. Furthermore, his research has been featured in several newspapers and media groups, including The Lancet, The Economist, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BBC, NBC, ABC, Fox News, Foreign Affairs, the Globe & Mail, the National Post and the Toronto Star.

Dr. Charlebois sits on a few company boards, and supports many organizations as a special advisor, including some publicly traded companies. Charlebois is also a member of the Scientific Council of the Business Scientific Institute, based in Luxemburg. Dr. Charlebois is a member of the Global Food Traceability Centre’s Advisory Board based in Washington DC, and a member of the National Scientific Committee of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) in Ottawa.

Michael LeBlanc is the president and founder of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc, a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and now, media entrepreneur. He has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career.

Michael has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions and participated worldwide in thought leadership panels, most recently on the main stage in Toronto at Retail Council of Canada’s Retail Marketing conference with leaders from Walmart & Google. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience with Levi's, Black & Decker, Hudson's Bay, CanWest Media, Pandora Jewellery, The Shopping Channel and Retail Council of Canada to his advisory, speaking and media practice.

Michael produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including the award-winning No.1 independent retail industry podcast in America, Remarkable Retail with his partner, Dallas-based best-selling author Steve Dennis; Canada's top retail industry podcast The Voice of Retail and Canada's top food industry and one of the top Canadian-produced management independent podcasts in the country, The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois from Dalhousie University in Halifax.

Rethink Retail has recognized Michael as one of the top global retail experts for the fourth year in a row, Thinkers 360 has named him on of the Top 50 global thought leaders in retail, RTIH has named him a top 100 global though leader in retail technology and Coresight Research has named Michael a Retail AI Influencer. If you are a BBQ fan, you can tune into Michael’s cooking show, Last Request BBQ, on YouTube, Instagram, X and yes, TikTok.

Michael is available for keynote presentations helping retailers, brands and retail industry insiders explaining the current state and future of the retail industry in North America and around the world.