PFK, Acme Collaborate on Kids’ Produce Area

ORLANDO, Fla. — When Trish James worked at Acme Markets she helped develop a kids’ produce section with convenient, healthy snacks like sliced apples, orange slices, mini juice boxes that could be easily tossed into a lunch box. So it’s only fitting that Produce for Kids, where James is now vice president, is partnering with Acme on a campaign involving that very same children’s section.

Acme added sponsored items in the two-foot section to support PFK’s Healthy Families, Helping Kids campaign. From Oct. 4 to 31, when customers bought the sponsored fruit and vegetable items, the suppliers of the sponsored products donated a portion of the sales to DonorsChoose.org to fund health and nutrition-based classroom projects.

PFK brought in new point-of-sale materials, including signs pointing shoppers to online resources as well as a character from the children’s program, “The Chica Show.”

“Our signage has the Sprout characters on it, so it brings the kids to that section,” said James.

The new point-of-sale materials will remain in Acme stores for a full year.

“What we’re hoping is to show some success from this particular idea and then it warrants other retailers to want to do the same,” said James.

She sees a need for retailers to provide these types of kid-friendly healthy snacks for their shoppers.

“As more items are being introduced to get kids to eat healthy and to make it easy for parents to prepare these items, I think there’s going to be a growing need to make sure these items have a home and they’re easily accessible to the consumer.”

James suggested retailers fill a 4x4 mobile cooler with fruit and vegetable snacks for kids and wheel it by the entrance of the store, in a high traffic area of the produce department or by checkout counters.

SN Blog: Can You Tell Me How to Get to Vegetable Street?

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