Elmo Says Eat More Produce
This week’s Convenience Matters podcast highlights the Eat Brighter initiative that helps retailers sell fruits and vegetables.
Jun 12, 2019
ALEXANDRIA, Va. – On this week’s episode of Convenience Matters, “The Letter P Is for Produce,” NACS hosts Jeff Lenard, vice president of strategic industry initiatives, and Lindsay Buchanan, marketing coordinator, discuss fruits and vegetables with Kathy Means, vice president of demand creation and consumer affairs at the Produce Marketing Association (PMA).
NACS has partnered with PMA to offer an innovative program for the convenience industry to sell more fruits and vegetables. “The Eat Brighter program is a collaboration among the Partnership for a Healthier America, Sesame Workshop and PMA, and now we’re making it available to NACS retailer members,” Means said. “It uses the favorite Sesame characters that kids love and parents trust to promote more produce consumption within kids two to five and their parents. Our goal is to get is to get healthier kids and build consumers for life who are buying a lot more produce, which is increasingly important to convenience stores.”
The program was created to be very easy for retailers to execute in their stores. “Our goal is to get these furry monsters promoting fruits and vegetables as easily as possible,” Means said. “Once someone signs up to become a part of Eat Brighter, there’s a turnkey marketing toolkit. It’s an absolute breeze to put these characters on products or signage, and they sell themselves.” (Click here for more on the program, and how you can participate.)
Produce is a huge opportunity for convenience stores, with fairly dramatic growth over the past decade. “From a marketing perspective, … we know that cartoon marketing works,” Buchanan said. “Kids want an apple if Elmo’s on it, …which makes it more likely that retailers will sell those perishable items.”
“The suppliers who participate in Eat Brighter have seen sales growth of 3 to 5% when they ‘re using the characters,” Means said. “Sales are critical to every business, but there’s also the aspect of community. Stores that are using this program show that they care about their customers, and that also contributes to loyalty and to sales.”
Each week a new Convenience Matters episode is released. The podcast can be downloaded on iTunes, Google Play and other podcast apps, and at www.conveniencematters.com. Episodes have been downloaded by listeners more than 100,000 times in 90 countries.
