Heathy Habits Mega Trend: A Tidbit from Store Expo 2006

Tony Schiano, President and CEO of Giant Food Stores, offered some interesting points about Health and Wellness while I was at the Store Expo and TREX conferences in New York City in December. He noted that healthy eating, exercise, and so on are NOT just a fad, but a trend that is continuing to take hold.

Unfortunately, barriers exist that keep us (the consumers) from being as healthy as we’d like: Shortage of time, higher costs of healthy eating, and lack of knowledge about products, and so on.

Giant’s research suggests that consumers need simplicity, guidance, and choices that match their needs and desires of leading a healthy lifestyle. As retailers, this means potential for increased success in health-related categories when we:

• Offer better information.
• Sort out conflicting information.
• Provide customers value related to leading a healthy lifestyle (e.g., a promotion that package healthy lifestyle items—a yoga strap with the purchase of a yoga mat).
• Saving them time.

This trend and the points above suggest that college stores should stock health-related products and foods/snacks. In addition, products and services that you can offer to help customers make faster, better, healthier choices should be benificial to your customers and your bottom line.

If you missed the NACS Campus Marketplace article about other trends and issues of note from the 2006 Store Expo and TREX event, NACS members can check out the CM article at http://www.nacs.org/news/010507-expo.asp?id=cm.

Tony Ellis, CAE
NACS Director of Education
tellis@nacs.org