CHICAGO, April, 16, 2026 - Back when delivery drones were still a wild idea even for science fiction writers, Mark Freeman was experimenting with the high-tech devices as a way of moving food around Microsoft’s sprawling campus in Redmond, Washington. Working for the software giant seemed a perfect fit for Freeman, by anyone’s gauge a free thinker who delighted in rethinking the status quo.
His fresh approach to business-and-industry foodservice earned him the 2012 Silver Plate in what was then called the Foodservice Management category.
Now Freeman is taking a new step in a 50-year career that also extended to managing foodservice facilities at innovators like Hewlett-Packard, LinkedIn and Ford. In the process, he’s hoping to change the impression of what’s now tagged as onsite, noncommercial or—forgive us — captive foodservice. Freeman prefers the term “everyday foodservice.”
He’s hoping to establish that label as part of an effort to elevate the status of operations that daily sustain school children, college students, healthcare patients and employees, and consumers at their workplaces.
The main vehicle is a daily newsletter he’s launching called Grey Hair Wisdom—"the thing I’ve always needed,” he said in announcing the venture in a LinkedIn post. It will deliver aggregated news and commentary five days a week, with a recap on Sundays.
A main point of difference will be a focus not only on the four main sites of everyday foodservice—K-12 schools, colleges and universities, healthcare facilities and corporate locations—plus prisons and other correctional facilities, and senior living operations.
The approach, according to Freeman, will be eliminating what he blasts as an annoying waste of time and brainpower: a propensity of everyday-foodservice leaders to assume they have to reinvent the wheel when confronted with a major problem. A solution is often there for the taking, but it’s outside the flummoxed operator’s own segment, so they don’t look.
Freeman said his newsletter will ignore the walls between segments to highlight ideas and solutions that easily transfer from one sector to another.
“It’s exhausting to watch,” Freeman wrote.
He also promises to keep his newsletter free of manufacturer and supplier influences.
More information on the new chapter in Freeman’s life is available from his website, GreyHairWisdom.org.
For information on this year’s Gold and Silver Plate winners, click here.
As Managing Editor for IFMA The Food Away from Home Association, Romeo is responsible for generating the group's news and feature content. He brings more than 40 years of experience in covering restaurants to the position.