Celebrating the Family

When Food Marketing Institute’s inaugural National Family Meals Month kicks off this September, many of the meal solutions that retailers tout will be the result of careful coordination with their supplier partners.

The initiative seeks to call attention to the societal benefits of eating meals at home, which include better relationships with family and peers, improved academic performance and a reduced likelihood of drug abuse, according to research included among FMI’s comprehensive online resources dedicated to the initiative.

Food retailers and their vendor partners will take this opportunity to showcase the role they can play in helping bring families together around the dining table by offering meal solutions. Promoting family meals at home, whether those meals have been partially or fully prepared at the supermarket, or made from scratch using store-bought ingredients, can help retailers better compete against the convenience offered by quick-service restaurants.

“Grocers have a role in showing their shoppers how easy it is to prepare a meal for the family,” says Cathy Polley, executive director of the FMI Foundation and vice president of health and wellness at the association. “It may not be a traditional family — it could be a couple of college students living together, it could be a grandmother raising young children — but no matter what the family dynamic looks like, the local grocer has the solutions that can help.”

The role of suppliers has gained more prominence in FMI’s efforts around family meals this year, as 2015 marks the first time the association has recognized an associate member with its Golden Plate Award. The award, launched in 2013, is given out annually to companies that excel at promoting family meals throughout the year.

“Our associate members are going to be very important in bringing National Family Meals Month to life in September,” Polley says. “It is our associate members who are specifically working with retailers to help them implement in-store family meal campaigns.”

The Coca-Cola Company is among those suppliers supporting FMI’s family meals effort, which jibes with the Atlanta-based company’s overarching effort to encourage occasion-based purchases that include beverages.

“We are trying to come up with solutions together with our retailer partners that are best for the shopper,” says Summer Butler, director of shopper initiatives at Coca-Cola. “We believe that the meal occasion is one we should be owning, with the growing consumer interest in the deli area of the store, and with the interest people have in cooking again from an ingredient perspective. We think that having a focus on meals is important.”

The FMI National Family Meals website includes comprehensive toolkits to help both retailers and suppliers get involved in and promote the event. Among the ideas suggested for suppliers:

• Share content such as research, videos and celebrity endorsements with retailer partners to help them promote National Family Meals Month;
• Create awareness by including National Family Meals Month in brand communications;
• Promote awareness through social media using the hashtags #familymealsmonth and #raiseyourmitt — a reference to an aspect of the initiative calling for consumers to “Raise Your Mitt to Commit” to having one additional family meal at home per week; and
• Partner with other suppliers to promote National Family Meals Month, by creating a co-op free-standing insert, for example.

The site includes a host of activation ideas, along with a database of tips and real-world examples of meal solutions effectively deployed by FMI members.

Timing Is Ideal
The September timing of the industry-wide focus on eating meals at home is ideal for both retailer and suppliers, says Polley, citing the opportunity for tie-ins with back-to-school promotions.

“In the summer we are a little more loosey-goosey with our meal habits, and then in September we get back into our routines,” she says. “This seems like a good time to get back into focus on family meals at home, and to make time to sit down for one extra meal at home per week, whether that’s lunch, dinner or breakfast.”

Polley says the National Family Meals Month initiative is attracting interest from a wide range of retailers large and small, who will be promoting it in a variety of ways and touting a diversity of meal solutions.

“Our retailers are offering prepared foods, and they are offering gourmet cooking lessons,” she says. “It runs the entire gamut, but it is all about coming together as a family around that table.”