Feel Good Family Directors Tracey Jefferies and Sarah Pullen combined their extensive experience of food and behavioural science to develop the UK’s first accredited behaviour change workshop for food businesses ‘Healthy Profit,’ helping customers get healthier. Their current research Super Yummy will identify how food descriptions affect customer food choices.
The challenge: Improving customer’s eating habits whilst still generating a healthy profit.
The solution: Health by stealth using behavioural science.
Health policies and policies around healthy eating are increasingly visible in our high street, places of work, education, recreation and care.
In March of this year Public Health England released a document under the engaging title ‘Healthier Catering Guidance for Different Types of Businesses.’ There is no getting away from it, health is increasingly on the agenda for the wider food environment; the growth in local authority food strategies and healthy food award schemes demonstrates this.
Research shows branding foods as healthy leads to a decline in their selection and that traditional healthy messaging only works with the ‘vigilants’, those consumers who already actively seek out healthy food.
The biggest perceived challenge to any food business when thinking about modifying their offer for consumer health is: ‘I change my offer, I lose my customers, I have lower margins, more waste, profits fall.’ Unless you are specialising in healthy food, that is.
Food business want to see benefitsbeforethey consider supporting Public /Environmental Health initiatives to improve local population health. As a food business making a profit, great margins, continued customer loyalty and customer growth, as well as maintaining local employment are all at the top of the list.
To make a dent in our growing waistlines our food environments must change and keep pace with the way places change to accommodate diverse and growing populations. If you look at most town centres, customers for food businesses in some areas have changed quite radically over the years. Slow incremental changes to food offers doesn’t have to mean a dent in business profits though – in fact, quite the opposite.
For most of us eating out iseither a treat or a necessity. Surely anything with the healthy label will be tasteless, not enticing and small portions?
On the plus side, research tells us most of us do know what they should eat, it’s just not that easy to do it.
All food environments have multiple modifiable features that can impact on customer food selections and behaviours such as: changing attitudes to fruit and vegetable consumption and High Fat Salt Sugar (HFSS) food consumption; increasing fruit and vegetable consumption; decreasing consumption of HFSS; eating in moderation; overall improved dietary behaviours and reduced sedentary behaviour. The benefits are wide and varied, healthier weight for customers; reduced risk of associated disease from over consumption of certain foods; improved dietary and activity behaviour.
The far reaching economic and social benefits include: less impact of ill health on NHS budgets; reduced work sickness; thriving, vibrant and happier communities.
This presentation will show how food business can improve their offer to benefit their customers health through ‘Healthy Profit’. FGF offer the UK’s first accredited behaviour change workshop for food business. Based on behavioural science this workshop gives food businesses all they need to know to make their food offer healthier, grow customer loyalty, grow their children’s market, throw less food away, improve margins and profits. We will also present the first findings from our recent research ‘Super Yummy’ which looks at how different food descriptions influence customer choice. Health by stealth is a way you can help your customers improve their dietary behaviours without them even noticing.
