Events — Where You’ll Find Ordana

Upcoming

National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors

NAW Executive
Summit 2027

Charting the Road Ahead

Jan 19–21

2027

Washington, DC

Upcoming

NAW Executive Summit 2027

📅 January 19–21, 2027 📍 Grand Hyatt Washington, DC

The NAW Executive Summit is the premier annual strategy event for American wholesale distribution — bringing together CEOs and senior executives from the largest distribution companies across every sector for three days in Washington, DC. The 2027 theme is Charting the Road Ahead. Ordana will be at the Summit connecting with distribution leaders on how autonomous AI agents are transforming the order desk.

The Summit’s Operational Excellence community track — focused on operations, technology, and people — is where the conversation around AI and order automation belongs. If you’re attending, we’d like to connect.

Past attendees include

Ferguson Enterprises • Graybar • WESCO • Genuine Parts • Uline • Do it Best • Imperial Dade • Dot Foods • Bunzl • Henry Schein • Patterson Companies and 100+ more

Connect with us at the Summit →

Past Events

Past Event

Groceryshop 2026

📅 September 22–24, 2026 📍 Las Vegas, NV

Groceryshop 2026 made one thing clear: automation across grocery and distribution is moving quickly from experimentation to real-world execution. AI was everywhere — but what stood out was how the conversation has shifted from tools that help people work faster to systems that actually complete work.

Key takeaways

✓Agentic AI is shifting from assistance to execution. The conversation has moved from AI that helps someone make a decision to AI systems that complete the workflow themselves — including handling exceptions. For distributors, that means agents executing the order workflow end-to-end, not just surfacing it faster.

✓Physical automation is becoming very real. The robotics and warehouse automation on the show floor felt deployable, not futuristic. Which creates a visible disconnect: a distributor can invest millions automating what happens after an order reaches the warehouse, while someone still manually answers the phone, reads the email and types it into the ERP. That upstream gap is increasingly hard to ignore.

✓The future is many specialized agents, not one AI system. Retailers and distributors will run multiple specialized agents working across different parts of the business — consumer agents, merchandising agents, order agents, fulfillment agents — with automation eventually operating across nearly every step from intent to delivery.

✓The companies that win will connect AI to real operations. Simply having AI is no longer a differentiator. Value comes from connecting it to real workflows — the right data, business rules, ERP integration and the ability to handle exceptions. That is especially true in distribution, where orders arrive in every format and no two accounts behave the same way.

“The next major productivity shift will come from systems that do work, not simply software that helps people do work.”

Talk to us about what we saw →

Ordana at IFDA 2026 Solutions Conference, San Antonio

Past Event

IFDA Solutions Conference 2026

📅 September 15–17, 2026 📍 San Antonio, TX

Ordana was proud to sponsor the IFDA Solutions Conference 2026, themed “Forward in Focus.” The conference brought together foodservice distribution leaders from across the country to discuss operations, technology, and the future of the industry.

Key takeaways

✓AI adoption in distribution is moving from curiosity to deployment. Distributors aren’t asking whether AI has a role — they’re asking where it fits first.

✓Labor pressure remains the defining operational challenge. Recruiting and retaining order desk staff is harder than ever, and the cost of turnover is rising.

✓The industry wants automation that works with existing systems and customer relationships — not platforms that require behavior change from accounts.

✓Institutional knowledge and succession planning surfaced repeatedly. When experienced employees leave, the knowledge they carry is rarely captured before they go.

✓The relationship-first culture of foodservice distribution isn’t going away — but distributors are ready for the back office to catch up.

Talk to us about what we heard →

Ordana booth at IFDA 2026 Solutions Conference

From the floor

“Your order desk, run by AI agents.”

That message resonated with every distributor who stopped by the Ordana booth. The conversations confirmed what we already knew: the order desk is the most labor-intensive, most error-prone, and least automated part of the distribution operation — and the industry is ready for that to change.

Thank you to IFDA and to every distribution leader who took the time to connect with us in San Antonio.

Where you’ll find us