Last fall, in an attempt to distinguish itself from its competitors, Hannaford unveiled an innovative program called Guiding Stars. Designed by nutrition experts at places like Harvard and Tufts, it assessed more than 25,000 foods for nutritional content. The more healthful the item, the more stars it received—one, two or three—indicating foods deemed to be the good, better and best choices. Points were earned for whole grains, fiber, vitamins and minerals, and points lost for saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol and added sugars and sodium. (Tellingly, 72 percent of items in the store received no stars.)
The program’s reception so far has been, well, stellar. Even hard-to-please nutritionists like New York University’s Marion Nestle have praised it. As for shoppers, a recent survey found that 80 percent are aware of Guiding Stars and 40 percent use it “fairly often.” The only folks who haven’t been so pleased are vendors of unstarred items. Several have approached Hannaford to see if tweaking their recipes might earn them a star. For borderline products, it’s possible, but no amount of tinkering would redeem Twinkies.
Still, for Hannaford, devising the rating system was only the start. Equally important, it put in place a broad marketing plan to explain Guiding Stars to customers, and it expanded a pre-existing program of in-store nutritionists. Now shoppers can sign up for free one-on-one sessions with a dietitian or register for free classes. Newly diagnosed diabetes patients might sign up for “Carb Counting 101”; new heart patients, for “Shake Down on Sodium.” There are even tours for school groups to make healthy eating fun and tips for parents on nutritious, kid-friendly meals.
Granted, junk-food addicts aren’t suddenly snacking on broccoli. But the rating system has clearly changed the way some people shop and eat. Over the past year, sales of starred cereals, soups and snack foods grew at twice the rate of similar items without stars. Growth in sales of starred frozen dinners outpaced no-star entrees more than four to one. Lean ground beef (90 percent or more fat-free) rose 7 percent, while sales of the standard stuff fell 5 percent. When the results were released, nutrition scientist Lisa Sutherland of Dartmouth, who co-chaired Hannaford’s scientific advisory panel, was floored. “Normally people will change their eating habits for six months before they start backsliding,” she says. “These numbers are getting stronger.”
The success has apparently left Hannaford’s parent company, the Delhaize Group, hungry for more. In March, it rolled out Guiding Stars in its Florida-based Sweetbay Supermarket chain. In 2008, it will launch the program in Food Lion, its 1,300-store chain in the Southeast and mid-Atlantic states. And it is considering licensing the program to other chains in different regions of the country.
But competition is coming. At the end of the month, Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, is unveiling his own Overall Nutritional Quality Index. It will give even more detailed ratings than Hannaford’s, using a 100-point scale, and include additional factors like protein quality in its rankings. Katz is finalizing plans with Topco Associates—a cooperative of independent grocery-store chains and wholesalers—to introduce the system next year in roughly 2,000 stores nationwide. Sure, it’s ambitious. But Hannaford has shown that such lofty goals are more than just pie in the sky.
