To counsel or not to counsel, that is the question -- at least when it comes to herbal remedies and nutritional supplements.
As these products have multiplied on grocers' shelves in recent years, many retailers have been cautious about dispensing recommendations and advice to customers, while others have moved aggressively toward providing information and education.
Supplements in the food, drug, mass and natural supermarket channels rang up over $3.9 billion in sales during the 12-month period ending June 2001, according to San Francisco-based SPINS, a market research firm focused on natural products. The drug and mass channels were the neck-and-neck leaders with $1.15 billion and $1.11 billion, respectively. Meanwhile, the mainstream food channel bottled up $964 million, while the natural supermarket channel, which includes grocers like Whole Foods, Austin, Texas, and Wild Oats, Boulder, Colo., tallied $729 million in sales.
Pratt's Wellmarket, a new store focused on whole health and wellness and operated by Pratt Foods, Shawnee, Okla., is one of the retailers who have made a concentrated effort to educate its pharmacists on the evolving vitamin and supplement category.
"The sales of vitamins and supplements have grown immensely in the last couple of years," Kay Stanfill, registered dietitian at Pratt's Wellmarket, Edmond, Okla., told SN. "The [pharmacists] have gone to a lot of trouble to be trained on the newer things and be trained on herbal supplements."
She said that all employees who work with supplements undergo a certification process. Pharmacists, who must complete continuing education hours to maintain their pharmacy certification, may use those hours to study supplements.
"Not many stores have pharmacists that are re-educated on vitamins and supplements, and it's a good idea," she said. "People really want to ask questions."
It is especially important at Pratt's Wellmarket, which houses an extensive selection of over 100 brands of vitamins and supplements, as well as 200 bulk herbs in a 510-square-foot section. The stand-alone unit also has a 135-square-foot reference library, as well as a Healthnotes kiosk for additional consumer information.
Wild Oats Markets also provides its customers with information so they can make their own informed decisions on vitamins and supplements, according to Rob Michalak, a Wild Oats spokesman.
"In general, we have people informed about all our products -- they give [customers] objective information about them so they can make a choice about those products for [themselves]," Michalak said.
He also said that the retailer puts all products through a rigorous screening process. "We're discriminating about any product we put on the shelf," he said.
Other retailers are more reluctant to proffer vitamin and supplement suggestions to patients due to lack of patient information at hand and lack of complete knowledge about this burgeoning category.
Dan Alder, vice president, pharmacy operations, Farm Fresh, Virginia Beach, Va., said that while most pharmacists should have proper training on recommending nutritional supplements, "with oddball supplements, most pharmacists don't have enough education with these products."
Although the retailer has considered installing a health information kiosk and obtaining CD-ROM programs on herbal supplements, Alder said, "You're still opening yourself up to a risk because you don't have a handle on what you're dealing with."
However, he pointed out, "if the pharmacist feels comfortable and knowledgeable on the product, by all means he'll help them out." Besides, Alder said that most patients don't ask pharmacists questions on supplements, because "most people taking these supplements read up on them beforehand."
Within the pharmacy walls and health and beauty aisle at Farm Fresh, there is no expert staff member on hand to specifically answer questions on vitamins and supplements. "It would be good to have someone knowledgeable, but where do you have the time to do so? Our biggest focus is to create programs to relieve the stress level of the pharmacists," Alder said.
Ralph Prescott, category manager for Prescott's Supermarkets, West Bend, Wis., said the retailer steers customers toward the Healthnotes kiosks. He said that in August, Prescott's, which contracts pharmacy space out to a separate company in its stores, installed a new 7.0 version of the reference program, which has expanded sports nutrition and supplements sections.
"It's a struggle to get an expert," Prescott said, adding that the company would like to have an expert on hand at some point.
The supplement industry itself is aware of the need for education about its products. In late July, the Dietary Supplement Information Bureau formed to provide science-based information on all aspects of supplementation and to jump-start education and awareness. DSIB, an arm of the industry coalition Dietary Supplement Education Alliance, also introduced an educational Web site -- www.supplementinfo.org -- where consumers and retailers alike can research information on any supplemental product.
The category has bloomed, but the level of education and training among pharmacists has dropped, said Laurie Demeritt, president of the Hartman Group, Bellevue, Wash.
"In years past, the vast majority of questions were on vitamins and basic supplements, like vitamin C, calcium, iron," she said. "As the growth rate in herbal and specialty supplements has soared and made it a formidable, emerging category, consumers felt that pharmacists were not as up on these products, so they've turned to friends, magazines, books."
According to the Wellness Lifestyle Shopper Study, a consumer mail-in survey conducted in February by the Hartman Group, pharmacists ranked 10th on the list of which source consumers turn to when they want to learn more about supplements.
Demeritt said, "Most consumers feel they know more about the category than pharmacists do."
She said that retailers should be more open to dialogue at the store, have nutritionists, more health screenings and more seminars. "Consumers are looking for events, an experience to tie them into the store."
