How do we inspire customers to be healthier?

What keeps me up at night about the grocery industry? How we, as an industry, can break through to the average customer with a health and wellness message that resonates with them and inspires them to make positive changes when…

It isn’t fast, cheap or easy.

In fact it can feel like a downright uphill battle. Especially when profits are at stake.

There are days I am passionately reminding people that the greatest wealth is health, explaining to them with science and practicality that wellness is within their reach, sampling healthy food and beverages that actually taste good and casting a vision that their lives can change for the better with small daily habits. But, sometimes I just end up feeling like Kristen Wiig’s character in the Saturday Night Live skit, Dream Home Extreme Giveaway. (If you want a good laugh, watch it!) Emma Stone’s character, Leah, just keeps eating her potato chips completely disinterested that she just won a $2,000,000 luxury home makeover. “She’s about to have…her whole life changed…she is gonna flip her bean, oh my!” says Wiig. Leah is like, “Meh.”

Leah is being handed a life changing experience on a silver platter FREE. And, she doesn’t care. She most likely will not be walking into a grocery store and paying $3 for a bottle of reverse osmosis water when she can grab a soda for less than half the price. After all, soda tastes better. And, she would roll her eyes at the notion of a $15 jar of organic nut butter.

Customers who are committed to health and wellness don’t think twice about paying an extra dollar per pound for organic apples vs. conventional, or will buy the lesser-known company’s non-GMO brand of corn chips over a national brand’s GMO equivalent. These customers understand that ultimately you pay for your wellness, whether you invest in your health on the front end or end up paying medical bills and higher insurance premiums later. They are all, “YEAH!”

I’ve stood in stores simply saying “hi” and handing out FREE infused water to our guests, with no strings attached. Yet some treated me like I was serving up an eco-friendly cup of the Black Death.

I know we are not going to be able to get through to everybody. However, I believe with hard work, commitment and consistency, we could do more. It will take an investment of building trust, relationships and education. Putting people over short-term profits for long-term gains.

Together, we can deliver a health and wellness message to more customers that will resonate and inspire them to change.

Let’s turn more “mehs” into “YEAHs”!

How are you breaking through to your customers with a health and wellness message?