Jun 26, 2018

By: Allison Febrey, Assistant, Health and Wellness/Food Safety, Food Marketing Institute

Community CollaboratorsEveryone may not agree on what to have for dinner, but we can all agree on one thing: family meals are important. Food retailers, food suppliers, and community organizations all support National Family Meals Month™ (NFMM), encouraging consumers to share one more meal together at home each week. While the family meals movement started in the food retail industry, community groups have now taken up championing the family meals mitt. Over 75 community collaborators support NFMM and more organizations join each day. 

Trusted Allies 

Many consumers see both their grocery store and their community organizations as allies in supporting their health and wellness (Trends 2017).  With multiple trusted sources promoting family meals at home, the message of its benefits provides surround sound for consumers. In fact, some food retailers and community organizations partnered during NFMM to help families achieve more shared meals. 

A Partnership To Feed Families

For the past two years, Hy-Vee, Inc. worked with Meals from the Heartland, an organization that packages meals for delivery to malnourished people in Iowa, across the United States and around the world. During September, Hy-Vee donated $1 to Meals from the Heartland for every social media post that included a selfie of a family sharing a dinner and the hashtag #hyveefamilymeals. Hy-Vee donated $100,000, providing meals to families and encouraging them to share one more meal together. 

Healthy for Good 

Another great example of Community Collaborator participation in NFMM is American Heart Association (AHA). This past year, AHA, through their Healthy for Good program, created a gold-plate winning campaign by retooling existing resources about family meals into one NFMM landing page. On this custom webpage, AHA integrated its already-made recipe box feature. This feature provided consumers an easy way to bookmark recipes to use for family meals. Their campaign also included e-newsletters featuring NFMM, reaching over 600,000 consumers. 

In response to this surging participation, we’ve created a toolkit for community collaborators. Here’s a quick look at what’s in the toolkit:

  • Key messages for consumers and employees
  • Supporting Research
  • Activation ideas
  • Graphics (including 5 infographics in both English and Spanish)
  • Sample social media posts, press release, and more

For more information, check out the toolkit here. For even more National Family Meals Month resources, view our food retailer toolkit, our food manufacturer toolkit, and our best practice guide.