Technology accounts for only 30% of the equation for most foodservice businesses — the remaining 70% still depends on people, Tiffany Honeycutt, North American supply chain and procurement project manager with Dawn Foods Global, told attendees at the 2026 IFDA Solutions Conference in San Antonio.

The event, run by the International Foodservice Distributors Association from Sept. 12 through Sept. 15, was the first to combine IFDA's Solutions and Smart (sales and marketing) conferences. It brought equipment manufacturers, solutions providers and technology developers onto a single show floor, with more than 30 distributor companies presenting across info sessions. Sessions covered cybersecurity, warehouse operations, supply chain, sales and marketing.

The association also inducted 108 new members into the IFDA Truck Driver Hall of Fame and marked the retirement of President and CEO Mark S. Allen, who announced he will step down in early 2027 after 27 years with IFDA — 22 of them as president and CEO.

What did speakers say about failure and culture?

Jeff Barry, head of innovation at Dot Foods, opened the conference by framing the convergence of technology and the people who power it as the industry's central tension.

"To do innovation and to push technology and to make it okay to fail – to make it okay to have something that doesn't work – that takes a strong culture to accept that, and to keep pushing through that. So, I think the two are connected, as well," Barry said.

Aaron Barulich, president of BiRite Foodservice Distributors, applied the same logic to supplier relationships in a panel on partnerships and AI: "With your supplier partners, test and learn, give people permission to fail as they're learning about the technology and it'll help your organization."

A leadership panel led by Jon Birdwell, director of operations at Ben E. Keith, pressed managers to focus less on processes and metrics and more on the people doing the work. "We manage the process; we lead the people," Birdwell said, arguing leaders must show employees how their roles connect to broader organizational goals.

Panelists Christy Clark, strategic operations partner with Malin Integrated, and Stephen Long, training manager at Ben E. Keith, stressed mentorship, communication and trust — Clark on deliberately developing future leaders and learning from failures, Long on using his own warehouse experience to connect with new hires. One attendee urged leaders to ensure employees are "educated enough to be proficient and confident enough to utilize the tool," not merely to understand it.

How can prediction engines change supplier-operator economics?

Jeff Simpson, a principal with Deloitte, argued that predictive data models could move sales teams from the "rearview mirror" to "headlights." Combining hindsight with high-fidelity forward-looking data, he said, can indicate where consumer preferences are headed six to eighteen months out.

That shift changes the customer conversation. Instead of arriving with historical sales figures and asking operators to buy more, sales teams can bring a view of where the market is going and work with operators to capitalize on emerging opportunities.

What regulatory pressure is building?

Compliance work anchored several sessions, starting with FDA's FSMA 204 Food Traceability Rule and its July 2028 compliance deadline. Panelists urged distributors to map existing processes, identify gaps in traceability lot codes and other required data, and use technology and industry standards to improve information sharing across the supply chain.

Charles Leftwich, vice president of food safety and quality assurance with Sysco, cautioned companies against delay: "don't use that as a reason not to get started." A GS1 pilot referenced in the session showed significant gaps in traceability-specific data despite strong existing transactional records.

Extended Producer Responsibility laws add another layer. Seven states have adopted packaging EPR laws, with significant differences in reporting, fees, covered materials and producer definitions — and California's plastic-reduction and recyclability requirements are particularly stringent.

A session on the Make America Healthy Again movement examined a growing patchwork of ingredient restrictions and ultra-processed food rules that could force distributors to collect more product data, adjust assortments and track where products are sold, raising supply-chain costs and complexity. Cory Trio, an associate at Covington & Burling LLC, described the dynamic plainly: "it's really in each state, different sets of requirements that are rolling out."

With FSMA 204's deadline approaching and state-level rules multiplying, distributors who test traceability processes, engage suppliers and standardize data early will face narrower compliance risk than those waiting for final rules — and, as the conference's dominant theme held, the technology will only perform as well as the people trained to run it.