9 September 2025

When Randy Fields talks about food traceability, he draws on decades of hard-won experience at the intersection of retail, technology, and supply chains. As Chairman, CEO, and Founder of ReposiTrak, Inc. (NYSE: TRAK), he is leading one of the most ambitious efforts yet to digitise the American grocery supply chain. But his journey began in a very different business: cookies.

From Cookies to Code

Fields began his career in finance, founding Fields Investment Group in the early 1970s. In 1978, he co-founded Mrs. Fields Cookies with his then-wife Debbi Fields, serving as chairman as the business grew into a global chain of more than 900 stores across 12 countries. Behind the brand’s sweet success was a sophisticated data and supply chain operation.

Fields, who trained in computer science, saw early on that most chief executives were uncomfortable with technology. He, by contrast, embraced it. At Mrs. Fields, he built a real-time closed supply chain in which every ingredient was tracked and controlled, laying the foundations for what we now call food traceability.

When the company was sold in 1993, Fields retained rights to the software he had developed and launched a new venture, Park City Group. Decades later, that company would be renamed ReposiTrak, reflecting its core mission: helping retailers, wholesalers, distributors, and suppliers manage data, compliance, and traceability in the food system.

Drowning in Data, Starving for Clarity

Asked why traceability has been so slow to take hold in U.S. grocery, Fields points to structural realities. “The industry has an immense amount of data,” he explained, “but it is a very low-margin business. Unlike high-tech or finance, grocers simply can’t afford lavish technology investments. So while the data exist, they are rarely assembled or processed through the supply chain in a way that’s usable.”

That leaves the industry in a paradoxical state: surrounded by information, yet unable to act on it quickly when crises arise. From a public health perspective, Fields sees this as indefensible. “Traceability saves lives,” he noted. “It allows outbreaks to be identified and contained more quickly. Yet the grocery industry remains resistant to change.”

The Regulatory Backdrop

Food traceability has been on Washington’s agenda for more than two decades. After the 9/11 attacks, Congress passed the Bioterrorism Act of 2002, which required food businesses to keep records identifying their immediate suppliers and customers — the so-called “one step forward, one step back” rule. Conceptually sound, Fields believes, but far too slow in practice. Tracing contaminated food back to its origin could take weeks.

Then came the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), signed into law in January 2011. It was heralded as the most sweeping reform of U.S. food safety in 70 years, with a strong emphasis on prevention and traceability. But, as Fields observed wryly, “nothing much happened after 2011.”

In fact, the FDA was sued in 2018 for failing to act on FSMA mandates. A settlement required the agency to define high-risk foods and publish a timeline for compliance. That process culminated in FSMA Rule 204, which mandates enhanced traceability for certain categories of food starting in 2026.

Yet industry resistance has been fierce. The primary supermarket lobby, FMI (Food Marketing Institute), has repeatedly argued that traceability is unworkable. Fields is blunt: “They say it can’t be done. Meanwhile, we’re doing it — and it isn’t expensive.”

Why Exceptions Don’t Work

A central flaw in the FDA’s approach, in Fields’s view, is its reliance on segmenting which foods must be traced. Rule 204 applies only to a defined list of “high-risk” items. “That’s not practical,” he said. “How do you segregate products that are traceable from those that aren’t? Which truck has FSMA products and which doesn’t? It’s actually easier and cheaper to track everything.”

He compared it to Henry Ford’s early production line, where the Model T came in any colour so long as it was black. “Uniformity makes the system more efficient. Exceptions add cost.”

Food Safety, Wasted Food, and Antibiotic Resistance

Beyond regulation, Fields points to urgent public health and sustainability reasons for advancing traceability.

• Foodborne illness: As antibiotic resistance grows, treating infections linked to contaminated food will become harder. Faster traceability can limit outbreaks before they spread.
• Food waste: Fields cites figures showing that around 40% of food is lost in the supply chain before reaching consumers. Traceability can reduce this waste by improving logistics, forecasting, and shelf-life management.
• Sustainability: Reducing waste lowers emissions and conserves resources, aligning with broader ESG goals.

What Might Convince Retailers

Fields believes change will come less from regulators than from competitive pressure. Large retailers that adopt traceability early can market themselves as safer and more transparent, gaining consumer trust. Some have already mandated traceability for all products in their supply chains, reaping benefits in brand reputation.

Once implemented, the business case strengthens itself. Companies discover faster recalls, lower risk, reduced inventory, and improved supplier collaboration. In short, what begins as compliance ends as competitive advantage.

Why ReposiTrak Thinks It Has the Edge

At its core, ReposiTrak offers a cloud-based SaaS platform that connects tens of thousands of suppliers with thousands of retail and wholesale partners. Its solutions include:

• Traceability Network: Real-time tracking of product data (batch, origin, movement) across the chain.
• Compliance & Risk Management: Centralised documentation of audits, certificates, and safety records, forming what is reportedly the world’s largest compliance network, covering 30,000 suppliers and 110,000 facilities.
• On-Shelf & Supply Chain Optimisation: Tools to reduce out-of-stocks, correct pricing errors, forecast demand, and improve sales.
• Marketplace & B2B Commerce: A platform for supplier discovery and ordering.

The business model is straightforward: ReposiTrak charges suppliers $49 per month for unlimited data, while retailers and wholesalers access the system at no cost. The company’s biggest investment, Fields stressed, is data cleaning. “The industry’s data are dirty, unusable, and expensive to move. Our job is to clean them up before they pass through the supply chain.”

According to Fields, competitors’ systems suffer error rates between 35 and 70 percent. By contrast, ReposiTrak focuses relentlessly on quality.

Scaling Up — But Still a Long Way to Go

Despite operating the largest compliance and traceability network in the industry, Fields is frank about the scale of the challenge. “We’ve barely started,” he admitted. “There are hundreds of thousands of food suppliers in the U.S. We have thousands. It won’t happen overnight.”

Today, the company is focused on “level one” suppliers — those directly linked to retailers. But every level has its own suppliers, stretching back three, four, or five steps to the farm or “dirt.” Closing that gap will take years of sustained effort.

Interestingly, Fields isn’t worried about competition. “There will be more than one solution,” he said. “But most other approaches haven’t worked. We’ve been at this a long time. Our focus on data quality is what sets us apart.”

A Question of Standards

Fields contrasted U.S. reluctance with Europe’s more seamless adoption of standards. “Europeans adopt EU rules without much trouble,” he said. “But in the U.S., we’re still on the imperial system. We’ve never been very good at standards, or at applying them across an entire supply chain.”

That cultural resistance, he believes, is why U.S. grocers lobby so hard against regulation. Yet the tide may be turning. Roughly 60 companies have now declared that traceability is inevitable and have even proposed a timeline for adoption, sparking battles within the industry.

The Road Ahead

Fields describes himself as only “moderately happy” with progress so far. He recognises the enormity of the task but remains convinced that traceability is both inevitable and beneficial. “It will make the world a better place,” he said simply. “And it isn’t expensive.”

For ReposiTrak, the next chapter is about scale — onboarding more suppliers, expanding its data cleaning capacity, and pushing deeper into the supply chain. For the grocery industry, the stakes are clear: safety, sustainability, and competitiveness.

The question is not whether food traceability will happen, but how quickly. And if Randy Fields is right, the answer may depend less on regulators in Washington and more on competitive dynamics in the grocery aisle.