For 90 years Giant Food has run the same play in the same four zip-code clusters: know the Beltway shopper better than anyone from out of town ever could.
A family butcher shop became a regional grocery chain by treating tortillas, carne asada and pan dulce as infrastructure - not ethnic-aisle decoration. Forty years later, Vallarta is carrying that fresh-food system beyond California.
Jason Potter is the President and CEO of Grocery Outlet, the Emeryville-based bargain grocery chain known for its independent owner-operator model and treasure-hunt aisles. He took the top job on February 3, 2025, after nearly five years steering The Fresh Market and 26 years climbing through Sobeys, Canada's national grocery giant. He started bagging groceries at 13 in a small Alberta town and has been in the trade ever since.
Amrit Robbins is the CEO and co-founder of Axiom Cloud, a San Jose-based AI-powered refrigeration management software company serving grocery chains and cold storage operators. A Stanford-trained engineer and Forbes 30 Under 30 alumnus, Robbins previously co-founded Axiom Exergy — a hardware-first thermal energy storage company — before pivoting to software in 2020 with Axiom Cloud. His work addresses refrigerant leaks, which rank #4 on Project Drawdown's climate impact list, with a platform that requires no new hardware, deploys remotely, and earns payback in under a year.