Full Name
Dr. Marcia Schurer
Job Title
President
Company Name
Culinary Connections
Speaker Bio
Dr. Marcia Schurer is president and founder of Culinary Connections®, a 32-year international food consulting and training company specializing in meal solutions and innovative health and wellness programs for retailers, foodservice operators and manufacturers. As a recognized leader in the fresh prepared foods arena, notably healthy, natural, organic, allergen-free, plant-based, artisanal, specialty, and ethnic, Dr. Schurer has evaluated, created, launched and marketed a wide range of food products, meal solutions, operations and programs in the marketplace.
She is also one of the innovators of retail fresh prepared foods/foodservice and meal solutions in the United States, starting in the mid-1980’s when women started entering the workforce in record numbers, specializing in ready-to-eat, ready-to-heat, ready-to-cook, value added, healthier, convenient, take-out/take-home fresh prepared foods, including concept development, menu and recipe development, facilities design, operational procedures, food safety procedures, hiring and training, branding, marketing, merchandising, and financial reporting. Additionally, she’s been on the cutting edge for researching, tracking and forecasting emerging food trends, innovation, and consumer purchasing and eating behaviors and lifestyle values for decades. She is also the author of FitDelicious®: Lose the Pounds, Not the Taste: Food Intelligence Tools® for Healthy and Delicious Eating.
For more than 3 decades, she’s been attending 6 – 12 food trade shows a year and sampling 3,000 -5,000 new food products annually to keep pace with all the new food and beverage innovations in the U.S. and overseas. She knows firsthand the demands and challenges facing food retailers today in a fiercely competitive, constantly changing and disruptive marketplace and how to overcome those barriers. Additionally, she knows the many opportunities that also exist and how to identify those opportunities and successfully apply them to retail prepared foods, meal solutions and foodservice operations.
Dr. Schurer holds a Doctor of Education and Media Technology Degree from Boston University, a Master’s Degree in Professional Studies from Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration, a Bachelor of Science Degree in Human Development, Nutrition, and Education from Pennsylvania State University and a Certificat Avancé from La Varenne École de Cuisine cooking school in Paris.
She is also one of the innovators of retail fresh prepared foods/foodservice and meal solutions in the United States, starting in the mid-1980’s when women started entering the workforce in record numbers, specializing in ready-to-eat, ready-to-heat, ready-to-cook, value added, healthier, convenient, take-out/take-home fresh prepared foods, including concept development, menu and recipe development, facilities design, operational procedures, food safety procedures, hiring and training, branding, marketing, merchandising, and financial reporting. Additionally, she’s been on the cutting edge for researching, tracking and forecasting emerging food trends, innovation, and consumer purchasing and eating behaviors and lifestyle values for decades. She is also the author of FitDelicious®: Lose the Pounds, Not the Taste: Food Intelligence Tools® for Healthy and Delicious Eating.
For more than 3 decades, she’s been attending 6 – 12 food trade shows a year and sampling 3,000 -5,000 new food products annually to keep pace with all the new food and beverage innovations in the U.S. and overseas. She knows firsthand the demands and challenges facing food retailers today in a fiercely competitive, constantly changing and disruptive marketplace and how to overcome those barriers. Additionally, she knows the many opportunities that also exist and how to identify those opportunities and successfully apply them to retail prepared foods, meal solutions and foodservice operations.
Dr. Schurer holds a Doctor of Education and Media Technology Degree from Boston University, a Master’s Degree in Professional Studies from Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration, a Bachelor of Science Degree in Human Development, Nutrition, and Education from Pennsylvania State University and a Certificat Avancé from La Varenne École de Cuisine cooking school in Paris.
