1. The Road to Healthy Food Access:Healthy Corner Store Initiatives

2. This Presentation is will
Provide you with a roadmap to creating healthy corner store initiatives in your community.
Provide tools and resources availible to help you understand what you can do for improving food access in your community.

3. Hello!
I am Sara Elnakib
I am here to talk to you about some of the work we have done and the lessons we have learned.
You can find me at

4. 1. Map the area
To assess if this initative is right for your town you need to first map the area;
USDA Food Access Atlas
Health Departments have licenses to operate Corner Stores
Do a walkability assessment – see it for yourself

5. Assess the invintory of the stores
There are many tools you can use to assess food environment:
Nutrition Environment Measures Survey in Stores (NEMS-S)
 Instrument for Corner Store Snack Food Assessment
Food Retail Outlet Survey Tool (FROST)
We also created our own tool:
The Healthy Corner Store Scorecard

6. Store Recruitment Who to recruit? When to approach stores?
What materials? Recruitment flyer, product examples, store success stories
How to prepare? - sample script, recruitment and inventory scenarios, recruitment plan

7. Let’s get started recruiting
Make the pitch: recruitment script
Expectations and Benefits: flyer, product menu
Explain how its done: product examples, store owner success stories
Make it official: enrollment MOU, baseline intake and inventory

8. Phases
Our model is divided into 4 phases:

9. Phase 1: Inventory Changes
Healthy Product Education – Introducing New Products
Refer to: Sample healthy products

10. Is this corner store a good candidate?
Consider the following:
Store location and foot traffic
Store maintenance and feel
Store space and inventory
Owner’s knowledge and attitude

11. Phase 2: Healthy Food Identification Marketing Campaign
During the second phase of the program:
Stores agree to display a series of healthy food marketing material. Examples of marketing material displayed in stores are:
Shelf talkers
And you can see here Green means Go, Yellow means Caution, and Red means Stop and Think.
Shelf runners
This shelf talker compliments the shelf runners which are placed under products to help the customers make better decisions, again following that stop light system.
Recipe cards:
Simple, affordable and healthy recipes that can be made with items sold in bodegas like:
A black bean salad, with low-sodium canned beans and canned corn 11

12. Phase 4: Store Conversion (Small) Christian Grocery, Philadelphia, PA
BEFORE
AFTER
The last of our phases is providing stores with equipment to stock more healthy items. We call this a ‘Conversion’
I think that it’s a good idea to leave the conversion phase as one of the last phases for many reasons:
First, by this time you have built a relationship with the store owners and employees. Equipment can be expensive and you want to know that the owner is committed to increasing their healthy product selection.
Also, the owner has received a training from you and they have learned about ways to display produce or ways to promote new items or how to ask for customer feedback. 12

13. Additional In-store Programming
Taste Tests
Cooking Demos
Store Tours
There are additional In-store programming that can be implemented during any of the phases. My favorite is in-store nutrition education lessons. It’s a great way to:
build customer demand, especially when a store received equipment and is stocking new perishable items.
Ask for customer feedback and share that information with store owners
Promote the store with the community.
Other examples of in-store programming are:
Taste and tour events
Free samples of healthy food
Cooking demonstrations
And even health screening!
My collegue, and corner store nutrition ed guru, Nyssa Ertkin, is here today and can answer questions about lessons in the store as well.

14. Lesson Learned Summary of Lessons Learned
Build relationships with owners
Start small.
Phase activities.
Make it easy.
Provide support.
Collaborate with other stakeholders.
Partner with local nutrition and health care groups to provide nutrition education and health screenings.
Engage store owners in the education process.
The relationship that you build with your stores owners are priceless!
Last week I had a store owner in Camden recommend three stores to the program! Store owner word-of-mouth is really the best way to promote your program with stores in your city.
Start small:
You want to know your stores and build that relationship with them.
It’s also good to start small because you can take time to really more learn about the businesses, like:
Where do owners shop, what’s the busiest time of day ect. This can help you better plan you programing