Marketing and Branding Actions

This section provides recommendations to enhance marketing and branding opportunities for corner stores. It will serve as a roadmap when laying the foundation for long-term healthy corner store vitality.

The lessons learned during the discovery phase of the project are threefold:

Any program must

improve the overall

financial health of corner stores. Owners faced with declining revenues will be reluctant to make changes that risk further declines.

Establish a trusted

relationship with store owners and local communities before seeking changes in behavior.

Community demographics and store

competitionwill dictate a workable product mix.

With these three factors in mind, marketing and branding should focus on: • Identifying and building shared values with the community. • Enhancing the responsiveness of the local food system to local demand. • Increasing the capacity of shoppers to use healthy foods. • Assisting small store owners in improving their bottom line. • Enhancing technology utilization and innovation at the store level. • Building local capacity in the supply chain.

Incentivizing positive changes in behavior. The strategies address key sectors of the healthy corner store ecosystem—owners, operators, customers, and public agencies. The strategies are not sequential and some will take longer to accomplish; many relate to processes that must be repeated as businesses move in and out of the economy. The need will depend on the variety of players working together or independently. Where possible, actions should build upon and reinforce each other.

As the Healthy Corner Store Initiative develops over time, less public investment will be needed to spur healthy food activity. Initial public investment from County and state government should include financial support for the initiative and participating stores.