Top 5 Reasons Acme Fresh Market Wins A Gold Plate for Family Meals

By: Cathy Polley, RPh, Vice President, Health & Wellness, FMI & Executive Director, FMI Foundation 

In honor of September National Family Meals Month™, FMI is proud to recognize our members for implementing programs to encourage family meals through our Gold Plate Awards. Acme Fresh Market, the 2015 Retailer Category A (1-49 stores) Gold Plate Award winner, is no stranger to promoting the amazing benefits of eating cooked family meals at home. Let’s identify key strategies that allow Acme Fresh Market to effectively reinforce National Family Meals Month within their retail business:

5) Acme considers “the family to be the center of their grocery business.”

In preserving the family as a focal point for their retail operations, Acme is able to plan programs designed to cater to family needs and requests. Maintaining consideration of the family throughout the year fosters the relationship between the customer and the brand, planting the seed for families to commit to increasing their number of family meals per week during September National Family Meals Month as well.

4) “Feeding the Families of Our Community for over 120 years.”

According to Acme Fresh Markets, their company has been a grocery resource for family within the community for 120 years.  The wealth of knowledge fueled from decades of interacting with family structure and serving the primary source of groceries for many community households certainly proves helpful when implementing programs seeking to communicate ways in which families can utilize their local retail grocer to commit to having one more meal at home.

3) Acme Fresh Market seeks to “forge an emotional attachment between their brand and their community of customers.”

Acme approaches its family meals campaign as well as their “ongoing commitment to family meal promotion” by building levels of trust between the customer and their brand. Identifying their retail store as reliable sources of information, healthy product options and/or recipe ideas are excellent ways to increase the likelihood of your customers participating in your retailer-specific National Family Meals Month initiatives.

2) “We have an obligation to offer families a wide assortment of top quality foods.”

Acme also acknowledges tastes and preferences vary between and within families. Carrying a variety of quality choices makes the option of purchasing groceries for family meals more appealing.

1) “We want to help Moms and Dads realize the surprising power of family meals.”

Inspired by Miriam Weinstein’s “The Surprising Power of Family Meals,” Acme has stated their support in educating parents and adults of the benefits of eating home-cooked meals as a family unit. Did you know regular family meals are associated with higher grades and self-esteem?

For more resources and information to help you join in National Family Meals Month visit www.fmifamilymeals.com or access pre-recorded webinars reflecting data from FMI’s U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends 2015 report here.