December 18, 2025
Dear Members of IFMA The Food Away from Home Association:
Happy Holiday Season!
It has been an honor to serve as the Association’s board chair for 2025. We’ve accomplished so much! Bringing our new branding to life, launching a new in-person event, and creating stronger communication channels across the industry, including a new podcast, these are just a few of the highlights.
Obviously, our mission is to help grow our members’ businesses, and this involves a number of truly dedicated people. I can’t say enough about the extraordinary association staff and our amazing board of directors. I have been consistently impressed by everyone’s creative thinking and dedication. It’s truly exciting to see the positive impact we are making for our industry.
Here are just a few of the accomplishments of the past year:
In 2025, we added over 50 manufacturer, supply chain, and service provider companies as new members! This is due, in no small part, to our ongoing outreach efforts and our marketing work to build awareness of our benefits across the entire food-away-from-home ecosystem. We’ve engaged with over 200 operator members this year.
Our annual events welcomed more than 2,000 attendees – these included COEX, the Gold & Silver Plate Weekend, the new Go2MarketEdge, the Virtual Marketing & Sales Conference, and our Presidents Conference. You can see our upcoming events here >>
Speaking of Go2MarketEdge...the inaugural event in August qualified as “small but mighty.” We hosted about 80 participants in downtown San Francisco. By design, it was an immersive experience where attendees visited places like the mock grocery store Instacart uses to test its latest advances, and Shack 15, a communal space for tech innovators and potential backers. Read more >>
We held three Operator / Supplier Xchange events for the College & University, K-12 Schools, and Healthcare foodservice segments. These are exclusive one-to-one business meetings between multiple operators and manufacturer companies conducted over the course of a day. We have three Xchanges planned for next year.
Our Education Foundation is transforming and building a wider community among colleges and universities. The Foundation awarded scholarships to 60 students this year and has continued evolving to focus even more closely on building pathways for those coming into the industry as a career. Read more >>
The Next Gen Execs program continues to evolve. We had 32 participants in the 2025 cohort, they created over a dozen very impressive projects and presented their results at Presidents Conference from the Main Stage. Read more >>
Our in-person Foodservice Fundamentals course and our webinars remain popular. We had over 100 individuals take the in-person and digital Fundamentals course in 2025 and we went to six companies with the customized course.
We hosted 29 webinars this year with a combined 2,600 registrants. Our most popular were: Guide to Doing Business with K - 12 Schools, Doing Business with Restaurant Chains, the Broadline Foodservice Performance Recaps, and our 2025 Foodservice Industry Forecast.
We launched a new podcast. In addition to the existing Food CEO Xchange, with our President & CEO, Phil Kafarakis, we launched a new podcast in 2025 – Reality Check with our Managing Editor Peter Romeo. More on our podcasts >>
And finally our monthly newsletter, The Food Industry Pulse, is now bi-monthly, providing timely information from across the industry. If you haven’t yet subscribed, you should! Subscribe here >>
We are heading into 2026 with a lot of momentum thanks to all of you and your support and engagement with us.
I will be passing the torch of Board Chair next month to Greg Cocchiarella, Vice President of Industry Relations at Ecolab. Greg has provided invaluable service on the board over the past six years, including his dedication to expanding the role of our Education Foundation through his service as Foundation Chair, Treasurer, and Vice Chair. I am honored to support his leadership.
I wish you all a wonderful and prosperous New Year and encourage you to take advantage of all the industry events and member benefits provided by IFMA The Food Away from Home Association in 2026. We are here for you!
Teri Trullinger
Board Chair 2025
Group Vice President of Cargill Foodservice Sales