Nutrition Partners Dietitian Program

Origins:

Through Nutrition Partners, Stop & Shop’s team of licensed Registered Dietitians, community members get free help with a wide range of wellness topics from eating healthy on a budget to managing diseases through healthy eating. The team hosts webinars, healthy cooking demonstrations and one on one consultations, while also providing many educational resources on their page on stopandshop.com/pages/health-and-wellness. Community of Focus: Grove Hall, Boston MA - As a grocery store, we play an important role in helping our customers make healthier choices. So, Stop & Shop prioritized an existing store location in the Boston neighborhood Grove Hall, based on high rates of chronic health conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure in the community. Through our Grove Hall initiative, our Nutrition Partners play an even bigger role in supporting the community. Through a store refresh in Grove Hall, we added a community wellness room, dietitians’ office and an associate wellness area with information on rotating wellness topics. In these spaces, Christine Sinclair, one of our Nutrition Partners Registered Dietitians, will welcome customers and community members to free educational classes and workshops on a variety of wellness topics including weight management, healthy eating on a budget, managing chronic diseases through nutrition, financial literacy and more. Christine will also lead grocery store tours, 1:1 consultations and cooking demonstrations, in addition to educational webinars. She also works closely with community partners with a goal of making this store a wellness hub for the entire community- including customers, their families and our associates.

Contribution:

Stop & Shop created the Nutrition Partners team in 2020, which is now staffed with six full-time registered dietitians, all focused on improving the health of the communities we serve. One of the dietitians is specifically focused on the Grove Hall community, where Stop & Shop built an in-store community wellness space and dietitian’s office. Stop & Shop is also adding healthy displays to all our stores, with additional displays in the Grove Hall store, focusing on a better for you product assortment. Stop & Shop is also partnering with About Fresh to use their “Fresh Connect” produce prescription service, to improve the overall health of the Grove Hall community. After success at the Grove Hall location, the program has been rolled out to all Stop & Shop stores. Through Fresh Connect participants facing food insecurity can receive pre-paid debit cards ‘prescribed’ by their healthcare provider to purchase healthy food.

Objectives:

Stop & Shop’s Nutrition Partners aim to provide customers and local community members with free nutrition education and resources with the goal of improving health outcomes in our local communities. Free program services include:

• Personalized nutrition consultations o Educational webinars and classes
• Educational resources: shopping guides, handouts, meal planning templates and more
• Grocery store tours
• Private workshops for local community groups
• Healthy Merchandising
• Healthy product displays
• Product sampling of healthy products
• More promotions on healthy products in weekly flyer/circular
• eComm shoppable pages & recipes online
• “Our Dietitians Pick” vendor partnership program

Stop & Shop Healthy Food Sales: Stop & Shop currently exceeds its healthy food sales target (% of Own Brand sales that are considered healthy), in part thanks to the hard work of our Nutrition Partners team.

Impact:

Stop & Shop’s Nutrition Partners have educated over 3,000 community members through webinars and 1 on 1 consultations, all while expanding their free resources available online. They have established over 50 strategic partnerships (including Boys & Girls Clubs, YMCAs, schools, scout troops, non-profit organizations and more) focused on bringing free and accessible nutrition education to community members. The team successfully piloted a merchandising program called “Our Dietitians Pick” and has now rolled the program out across the Stop & Shop brand. This is a merchandising program aimed at promoting healthy product across all channels, with the goal of increasing healthy purchases. Stop & Shop and Christine were recently honored by the Boys & Girls Club of Roxbury with its 2022 Champion of Youth Award for our ongoing support for their food distributions, community nutrition education and more. Community-member testimonial: “Thank you so much! I’m officially down 20 pounds as of today. The lowest I’ve been since May 2018. Since I’ve spoken with you, I’ve made some of the tweaks we discussed, have tried some of the food options you suggested, have seen that it’s working, and feel like I’m on a path to success. So, thank you again!”

Quote:

“Increasing access to fresh and healthy foods for those facing food insecurity remains a top priority for us when it comes to caring for our communities,” said Gordon Reid, President of Stop & Shop. “With food insecurity continuing to impact the neighborhoods that Stop & Shop serves at an overwhelming rate, we’re proud to come together with About Fresh to ensure that even more people can access fresh, high-quality foods that support their wellbeing.”

Christine Sinclair and her team were so communicative and flexible with our staff, making this a stress-free planning process. Our girls had an amazing time and learned a lot, which helped supplement the nutrition education that our girls had been receiving on the basketball court all season. To make the education into a tangible reality was the best way to close out our nutrition unit. A store tour like this with Stop & Shop doesn't just provide our kids with vital education to improve their well-being, it helps build community togetherness, and we appreciate that so much. It takes an entire community to take care of our kids, and we are just so thankful for this partnership. Thank you again for the gift cards - helps our girls' entire families too! Shooting Touch Organizer, June 2022

Support Statement:

Christine Sinclair and her team were so communicative and flexible with our staff, making this a stress-free planning process. Our girls had an amazing time and learned a lot, which helped supplement the nutrition education that our girls had been receiving on the basketball court all season. To make the education into a tangible reality was the best way to close out our nutrition unit. A store tour like this with Stop & Shop doesn't just provide our kids with vital education to improve their well-being, it helps build community togetherness, and we appreciate that so much. It takes an entire community to take care of our kids, and we are just so thankful for this partnership. Thank you again for the gift cards - helps our girls' entire families too! Shooting Touch Organizer, June 2022