Canadian Grand Prix New Product Awards Finalist Bonus episode: Meet Tracy Bell, Co-founder, Millennia TEA

The Food Professor

Welcome to a special bonus episode celebrating the 29th ANNUAL CANADIAN GRAND PRIX NEW PRODUCT AWARDS

Sylvain and I are thrilled to be a sponsor of these prestigious awards for the third year in a row and have the chance to hand out the hardware on the stage to the winners in person for the first time!

We had the opportunity to meet and get to know many fantastic food innovators and entrepreneurs, creators and makers - from consumer brands to private retail labels. These are their stories.

In this episode, meet Tracy Bell, Co-founder + CEOCo-founder + CEO, Millennia TEA

Thanks for joining us on this special bonus episode of The Food Professor. Stay tuned for plenty of great interviews of the finalists from the Retail Council of Canada's Canadian Grand Prix New Product Awards. And stay tuned for our regular full-length episodes available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google - wherever you enjoy your podcasts today.

About Tracy

My passion is helping fuel wellness. I'm a corporate exec turned entrepreneur after a health scare in the family. At Millennia TEA, we're going back to tea's origins, where it was enjoyed with leaves fresh from the plant. We're the creators of Fresh-Leaf TEA - real, raw, whole-food tea. Washed, instead of dried out. Flash frozen to safeguard more nutrients instead of heated and processed.
My background is journalism and PR. I love a good story, and believe relationships are core to everything worthwhile. Meeting amazing people and doing something that matters are what light me up.

About Us

Dr. Sylvain Charlebois

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 Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience, and has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. Michael is the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts including Canada’s top retail industry podcast, The Voice of Retail, plus Global E-Commerce Tech Talks , The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois and now in its second season, Conversations with CommerceNext! You can learn more about Michael here or on LinkedIn.

Be sure and check out Michael's latest adventure for fun and influencer riches - Last Request Barbecue, his YouTube BBQ cooking channel!

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.

About Michael

Michael is the president and founder of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc, a senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and media entrepreneur. He has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. He 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 Secure conference with leaders from The Gap and Kroger talking about violence in retail stores, keynotes on the state & future of retail in Orlando and Halifax, and at the 2023 Canadian GroceryConnex conference, hosting the CEOs of Walmart Canada, Longo's and Save-On-Foods Canada. Michael brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience with Levi's, Black & Decker, Hudson's Bay, Pandora Jewellery, The Shopping Channel and Retail Council of Canada to his advisory, speaking and media practice.
Michael also produces and hosts a network of leading retail trade podcasts, including the award-winning No.1 independent retail industry podcast in North America, Remarkable Retail,
Canada's top retail industry podcast; the Voice of Retail; Canada's top food industry and the top Canadian-produced management independent podcasts in the country, The Food Professor, with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois.
Rethink Retail has recognized Michael as one of the top global retail influencers for the fourth year in a row, Coresight Research has named Michael a Retail AI Influencer, and you can tune into Michael’s cooking show, Last Request BBQ, on YouTube, Instagram, X and yes, TikTok.
Available for keynote presentations helping retailers, brands and retail industry insiders explaining the current state of the retail industry in Canada and the U.S., and the future of retail.