Promoting healthier lifestyles
Our ambition is to be ‘best for food and health’. As it suggests, this is not just about supplying good, healthy, affordable food but also inspiring people to live a healthier life style.
We want people to try new food, and cook more of their own, balancing the food they eat with the exercise they take. This is why we have invested so much in our Active Kids scheme and why we try to inspire our customers to cook with confidence. There’s more on this in the ‘Making a Positive Difference to our Community’ section.
Affordability
The recent economic situation has made people understandably more price-conscious. But that does not mean they want, or need, to compromise on the quality of their food.
Sainsbury’s opened with a belief in ‘quality perfect, prices lower’, and this ethos is just as strong now as it was when we began in 1869. Eating healthily does not have to be expensive, and we have been encouraging customers to try our basics range if they want great quality at affordable prices.
We extended the basics range last year, adding over 134 new lines. It offers such good value by, for example, using different cuts of meat, unusual shapes and sizes, or simpler packaging. Our brand standards and ethical values are the same for our basics range as they are for all our products. For example, all our fresh and smoked basics farmed salmon is 100% Scottish and meets the Freedom Food standard developed by the RSPCA. And all the products are free from hydrogenated fats and artificial flavour enhancers. In addition, there are 50 different ways for our customers to meet their ‘Five-a-day’ using basics alone. This means our customers can still have great quality food at affordable prices.
Outside our basics range, we also use in-store promotions to encourage our customers to eat healthily.
Case study
Five-a-day
We know it can be difficult to fit the recommended amount of fresh fruit and vegetables into a busy lifestyle, and the current economic downturn is not making that any easier. We try to help by:
- Running frequent fruit and vegetable promotions on everyday items, as well as seasonal produce
- Promoting 'mix and match' price offers
- Locating our fruit and vegetables at the front of our stores, making them easy for customers to find
- Making sure that over 25% of the 69 million Tip card recipes we printed over the past 12 months had at least one portion of Five-a-day fruit or vegetables
- Using a special Five-a-day logo to help our customers identify products containing fruit and vegetables
Our overriding commitment is to help make it easier and more affordable for all our customers to get their Five-a-day. A recent survey showed that the average amount of fruit and vegetables eaten dropped to only 2.6 a day between 2008 and 2009*, the comparable figure for Sainsbury's customers has risen over the past four years to 2.84 a day. An example of where our values make us different.
*5-a-day purchasing survey by Kantar Worldpanel, April, 2010.
Cooking
There have been some quite marked changes in consumer behaviour during the economic downturn, and one of these is a willingness to cook more from scratch at home. Our Tip recipe cards have proved so popular that we have printed 69 million of them over the past 12 months. Over 25% of these recipes contain at least one portion of Five-a-day fruit or vegetables, and 50% feature healthier recipes, with only green or amber ‘traffic light’ ingredients. And at least two Tip cards in every set of 12 are aimed specifically at kids. We also have ‘Make the Most of your Roast’ and ‘Love your Leftovers’ Tip cards that encourage customers to use up their leftover food and save waste and money.
'We continue to inspire our customers through the award-winning Sainsbury's Magazine, with over 550 recipes created every year, as well as our quarterly customer loyalty magazine 'Fresh Ideas' which features 20 recipe ideas every month, along with information about new products and money off coupons.
This year we launched the ‘Try Team’, a dedicated team of cooking ambassadors. They travel across the country visiting our stores and their local communities, inspiring our customers to cook. They are also online on our ‘Trynation’ website, which shows them cooking from our Tip card recipes, and bringing them to life.
Another recent idea is the ‘Fool Proof Cooking’ range, which is aimed particularly at people who want to cook more, but don’t have a lot of time. Likewise the new ‘Ingredients for Cooks’ range provides easy-to-use store cupboard products to make classic dishes like Mediterranean risotto and Moroccan tagine, even when time is short.
We continue to inspire our customers through the award-winning Sainsbury’s Magazine, with over 550 recipes created every year, as well as our quarterly customer loyalty magazine ‘Fresh Ideas’ which features 20 recipe ideas every month, as well as Jamie Oliver recipes, information about new products and money off coupons.
Over the past three years our ‘Active Kids Get Cooking’ programme has reached 11,200 schools, providing teachers with thousands of pounds worth of free cooking equipment, lesson plans, cooking certificates and awards. There’s more information on Active Kids Get Cooking in ‘Making a Positive Difference to our Community’ section.
Case study
Little ones product range
Our Little Ones baby and toddler club was launched in October 2009 and aims to provide parents of children up to four years old with targeted, nutritional advice and recipes through direct mail and a fully interactive website. All of the 180+ recipes are approved by the British Nutrition Foundation and our online experts like Dr Dawn Harper and nutritionist Sara Stanner (BNF) are available online to give the 300,000 registered users comprehensive health and nutrition advice for children.
“Pregnancy, infancy and early childhood are vital times for getting a healthy varied diet. Mums and mums-to-be therefore need accurate, reliable and practical information regarding the best balance of foods and drinks to choose for themselves and for their children in order to support their health, development and general well-being.”
Our key commitments
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Healthier baskets for our customers
We will make the most popular items in our customers' baskets healthier, focusing on products that contribute the most saturated fat, salt or sugar to the UK diet, to deliver a real impact on the nation's health
Next steps
- We will launch an industry leading, online dieting service, which will help customers manage their weight responsibly, eat healthy food and incorporate exercise into their daily lifestyle
- We will host a live UK stakeholder debate on health and cooking to raise awareness of the important role cooking plays in tackling the UK's public health challenges
Our views on the issues that are important to our stakeholders.
