HELPING CONVENIENCE STORES SELL “BETTER” FOOD

March 4, 2015
NACS Online

Corner store initiatives are providing retailers with the tools to offer healthier food alternatives to low-income communities.
​WASHINGTON, D.C. – At a small corner store tucked into a northeast Washington, D.C., neighborhood, an experiment in healthy foods is going on, courtesy of the D.C. Central Kitchen’s Healthy Corners program, The Atlantic reports. Thomas & Sons owner Jae Chung used to stock some onions and fruit, all of which sold at a premium. Today, he has a brand-new refrigerated case stocked with apples, grapes, limes and lemons in plastic containers. Baskets hold bananas and potatoes.
The transformation of his store from having a tiny selection of high-priced produce to a well-stocked case in a conspicuous part of the store is a scenario being played out at independent convenience stores in urban and rural areas across the country. Healthy corner store initiatives, run by various nonprofit groups, offer retailers the tools to stock fresh produce. Many programs provide training on how to stock refrigeration cases and sell the fruit and vegetables, as well as the actual cold cases and lists of suppliers.
“We buy product that’s aesthetically or geometrically challenged,” said Mike Curtin, D.C. Central Kitchen’s CEO. That means some produce is “the wrong shape or size to fit in the right box to fit in the right truck to fit in bins in the grocery store that are organized by size.” But that doesn’t matter as much to convenience store owners, who need good produce at a reasonable price.
The D.C. Healthy Corners program doesn’t stop with inventory. Staffers also hand out recipes utilizing the fruit and vegetables sold in that store, as well as provide cooking demonstrations and free product sampling. Currently, 67 corner stores in Washington, D.C., participate in the Healthy Corners program, which sold more than 140,000 fruits and vegetables from April 2014 to February 2015, a sharp increase from previous years. Other cities with similar initiatives include Chicago, Denver, New York City, Philadelphia and Rochester, N.Y