HEALTHY OPTIONS ON THE BLOCK
- Access to healthy food is key to the health of a community.
- In areas that lack supermarkets, residents may need to travel far to find nutritious food choices.
- Those who do not live near supermarkets often rely on corner stores or convenience stores.
- Since these stores do not always have healthy options available, it can be difficult for people to shop and eat healthily.
- You can help your town by increasing the availability of healthy and affordable foods, and by helping local corner stores sell fresh fruits and vegetables to residents.
FOLLOW THEIR LEAD!
Live Healthy Cumberland County (LHCC) partnered with 38 corner stores across the County to implement a Healthy Corner Store Program, improving access to healthy and affordable foods in underserved communities.
Thanks to the persistence of LHCC partners and staff, nearly every corner store in Cumberland County is involved in the Healthy Corner Store Program. Now, a greater number of Cumberland County residents have access to healthy and affordable foods including low-sodium canned vegetables, foods with no added sugar, low-fat milk, and more fresh fruits and vegetables.
ACTION STEPS
Partner Up
- Connect with your community’s corner store owners to talk about the benefits of their involvement in a healthy corner store program.
- Investigate the barriers they face to providing healthy food options.
- Offer corner store owners free advertising and coupons in local newspapers to increase collaboration.
- Encourage corner stores to form a purchasing collaborative that will collectively reduce the price of healthy products.
- Partner with your health department or local health system to provide health screenings at participating corner stores.
Provide Incentives
- Offer residents coupons for healthy foods at participating healthy corner stores to improve community program participation.
- Provide health education materials, free shelving units, healthier product alternatives, and healthy signage to corner stores to help customers understand how to choose healthier options and ensure the stores’ buy-in.
- Provide opportunities for corner store owners to work together on business development initiatives, purchasing collaboratives, and other useful practices for small business owners.
Promote Healthy Eating
- Help corner stores stock healthy foods such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat dairy products. Start by holding meetings that introduce local farmers to corner store owners. Do the farms have any surplus produce they are willing to donate, or sell at a reduced cost to the corner stores? If corner store owners are willing to form a purchasing collaborative, they can purchase produce together, which will reduce costs for each individual store.
- Provide green, yellow, and red labeling materials to identify healthy, moderately healthy, and unhealthy foods.
- Ensure labels are culturally sensitive and convey healthier lifestyle choices across all cultures.
- Provide recipe cards to advertise new healthy products and how to cook with them to demonstrate how healthy foods can be easily be incorporated in any lifestyle.
Evaluate
- Track inventory changes and the impact of healthy alternative product sales on corner store owners’ bottom line.
- Survey corner store customers on nutrition education to evaluate their changed perceptions of healthy eating.
- Interview corner store owners to gather feedback, best practices, and lessons learned from their experience with your Healthy Corner Store Program.
MORE RESOURCES
Access to Healthy Food and Why It Matters
The Food Trust
Live Healthy Cumberland County