Food & Health Alliance

Promoting fruit and vegetables properly in store is the key to success, according to healthyliving Programme Coordinator Ross Kerr. Clearly the first step is building links with reliable local producers. It’s also important to ensure that what is sold is fresh and competitively priced.

But none of this will have much impact if it is not then promoted effectively in the store. Mr Kerr refers to the fundamental ‘building blocks’ of promotion that apply to the sale of virtually any product. These include ensuring the products are given sufficient space, that they are attractively displayed and signposted and that they are at the front of the store to encourage impulse buying.

Investing in growth

This only works if stores are prepared to invest in the programme themselves. There have been some highly encouraging examples, particularly among the larger chains who have, for instance, installed chilled cabinets and completely refurbished some stores to showcase their fresh produce.

Encouragingly, most of the smaller stores have also shown similar percentage increases in fruit and veg sales. Mr Kerr describes one shop-keeper who managed over the course of the programme’s third phase to increase his fruit and veg sales from £200 to £1,500 a week. ‘He literally did everything we advised him to do and it’s worked for him.’

That required a big investment and writing off up to £200 worth of produce a week in the early days. ‘But he stuck at it and now people are coming to his shop because they’re getting a great selection and he’s reaping the benefits.’

The increased sales appear to be impacting on people’s eating habits as well. The programme’s own market surveys suggest that consumption of fruit and vegetables has risen by almost 20% while 25% more people are making meals from scratch.

Inevitably, like every other retail sector, convenience stores have been affected by the recession and for a time stores were reporting a downturn in fruit and veg sales. But that seems to have reversed in the last six months. Mr Kerr believes this may be because when budgets are tight people are more reluctant to spend money on petrol to travel to out of town supermarkets – with a positive knock-on effect on the local stores.

He is optimistic the Scottish Government will give the go-ahead shortly for a fourth phase of the programme. This will operate under the Scottish Government’s ‘Take Life On’ rebranding – a broader approach which will allow the programme to operate across a wider canvas than previously.

Focusing on quality

Over the course of the next three years the programme hopes to recruit another 200 stores. But its principal focus will be more on quality than quantity – by introducing a gold standard that all retailers can aim for.

‘Although we now have a lot of stores involved most of them are still a long way from the gold standard,’ Mr Kerr says. ‘We want to introduce a standard that would apply equally whether you are a small corner shop in a poor area or a big store in a relatively wealthy area.’

He is also hoping to introduce recipe cards to encourage customers to think of new ways of making use of the produce and to extend the scope of the project to cover other foodstuffs such as bread, milk and cereals.

And he would like to forge links with schools to encourage those children who go out to eat at lunchtime to check out the local store rather than patronise the fish and chip shop or burger bar.

All this has of course been good news for attempts to boost healthy eating in Scotland. But in Ross Kerr’s view convenience stores need the healthyliving programme just as much as the other way round. ‘If you’re going to have a convenience store that attracts the community you have got to carry a range of products, not just newspapers, cigarettes, soft drinks and crisps.

‘This is a matter of making the convenience store a one-stop shop where people can get a good range of the essentials. And certainly fruit and vegetables are now seen as one of those essentials.’