A taste of what's next

What will Canadians want to eat next? What will earn a permanent place in their fridge, pantry or home? What will surprise them, solve a problem or be so good they tell someone else about it?And what can we create that they simply can’t get anywhere else?

Those were some of the questions behind this year’s Loblaw Brands Innovation Summit, where more than 400 Control Brand vendor partners and Loblaw colleagues came together to explore the next chapter for our brands and what it will take to move them From Strong to Unstoppable.

As April Preston, SVP, Control Brand Product Management & Innovation, told the room, we’re starting from a position of real strength. We have some of Canada’s most powerful brands, extraordinary scale and relationships with millions of customers.

But food culture is moving quickly. Trends can travel around the world in hours, and customers have an enormous appetite for newness and inspiration. Increasingly, they’re choosing Control Brand products not simply for their price, but for their quality and innovation.

That makes this a moment to raise our ambition.

The goal: create products that are half a step ahead, different enough to be exciting, but familiar and relevant enough that millions of Canadians want to bring them home.

Turning up the flavour and the ambition

Throughout the day, the conversation moved from what we make to how we make it exceptional.

That means redefining value beyond price. Making healthier choices more delicious, accessible and affordable. Taking something that feels premium or specialist and bringing it to millions of Canadians. And paying attention to every detail, from flavour and texture to ingredients and the overall experience.

Sometimes innovation is a completely new idea. Sometimes it is doing something familiar exceptionally well.

Better ideas are built together

Creating those products takes more than a great idea.

Across conversations spanning merchandising, sourcing, quality and food safety, marketing, digital, insights and technology, one message kept surfacing: we have an extraordinary combination of capabilities at Loblaw, and even more when we combine them with the expertise of our vendors.

That means working together in ways that go beyond simply responding to a brief.

Because an idea is only the beginning. Getting the flavour, formulation or function right, choosing the right ingredients and materials, landing the right value and delivering consistently at scale are what turn an idea into something customers love.

The next chapter

The day ended by celebrating the vendor partners making an impact across our Control Brands with a reminder that great products rarely begin with one person or one team.

They come from people bringing different expertise to the same problem and having the conviction to keep working until something brilliant emerges.

That is what the next chapter is about.

Moving our brands from strong to unstoppable won’t come from doing more of the same. It will come from being more ambitious about what we create, more courageous about the ideas we pursue and more committed to making them brilliant.

Because the real opportunity isn’t simply to predict what Canadians will want next.

It’s to create it.