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And, he said, convenience store owners have seen better-for-you ambitions fall apart before. It wasn’t so long ago, he said, that everyone was talking about organic foods, but the sales didn’t live up to the buzz.
“Everyone will say they want healthy food, and you watch what people buy and it’s often very different,” he said.
He was also wary of modifying a store’s stock to cater to the buying patterns of people too young to vote. Kids make up a small spectrum of the minimart’s customer base, Lenard said, because they spend all day on closed campuses and have little buying power. But there are exceptions to every rule. Lenard visited one store where students streamed in for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
And not every attempt at healthy food in convenience stores has flopped. Minimarts sell more bananas than they used to, and nutrition bars are stealing space from packaged sweets, Lenard said. The trend is similar in the cooler case, where diet drinks and fortified waters have gone from fringe offering to beverage staple.
The Alliance for a Healthier Generation may nudge that healthy trend forward. Herr said the nonprofit plans to speak to every industry that contributes to the calories burned or consumed by children, and he would love to see the Wawas and 7-Elevens of the world adopt policies for pedaling healthy selections to their younger consumers.
“We hope that the free market will reward those companies that are trying to do the right thing,” Herr said.
While the “right thing” for retailers might be pretty clear – stock healthy products and sell them to kids – it may be a trickier proposition for beverage companies. Crayons President and CEO Ron Lloyd said he expected most entries into the kids drinks segment to fail because they have not one, but two hurdles to trip over.