Let’s hear it for Redner’s Warehouse Markets, which currently operates 39 Warehouse Markets and 13 Quick Shoppes throughout Eastern Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland and Delaware. The retailer has just launched a pretty comprehensive health and wellness platform that incorporates a new corporate dietitian, numerous health themes throughout the year that are supported with relevant featured products, and corresponding, dedicated endcap displays of those items.
The initiative is called HealthCents, and it will be headed up by the recently hired Meredith Mensinger, a registered dietitian and licensed dietitian/nutritionist. What’s interesting about this plan is that — given the times we’re living in — controlling food costs are a big part of the program.
"Our program is not just about improving people's diets, but showing our consumers how a healthy food choice doesn't mean having to spend more of their food budget,” Mensinger says. Her first online post on Redner’s website is even called, “Affordable Choices for Maintaining a Healthy Lifestyle!”
The premiere issue of a bi-monthly newsletter (also called HealthCents) includes various articles featuring specific products along with health tips. The products will also get a mention in the new HealthCents section of Redner’s circular every other week (Tyson, La Yogurt, Slim Fast and Clover Farms Dairy are among the companies mentioned in the current issue).
Each of the items is also merchandised with special HealthCents shelf tags in stores. As you can see, every element of the program reinforces and promotes another, from Mensinger’s columns right through to the shelf, and back up again.
The goal of making wellness and family health affordable has become an important goal of the mainstream supermarkets that we cover. It’s likewise a topic we increasingly write about on this blog. Our expert contributors talk about the importance of finding ways to make the sale happen, whether through private label, or couponing or education and sampling. Looking here, it’s easy to see that Redner’s is one of the retailers that gets it.