Dive Brief:
- Hy-Vee announced Wednesday it has launched a health and wellness subscription program called Healthy You.
- For $99 per month, members can access personalized nutrition counseling, preventative health screenings, fitness videos, virtual classes about preparing freezer meals and more. People must commit to a minimum of three consecutive months when signing up.
- Hy-Vee is looking to further monetize its health and wellness offerings as it more closely links nutrition with healthy living.
Dive Insight:
Hy-Vee is offering a suite of wellness services as part of its Healthy You subscription program, including two 30-minute appointments with a Hy-Vee dietitian, on-demand cooking classes, wellness classes focused on trending nutrition topics and access to a private Hy-Vee dietitian chat portal.
Additionally, members also get two free health screenings per year at participating locations.
Hy-Vee said the subscription service is available to adults across its eight-state region. Subscription registration is limited to individuals and cannot be shared by a household, per Hy-Vee’s website.
Gary Hawkins, CEO of Center for Advancing Retail & Technology, LLC, wrote in an email that Hy-Vee’s program is not comparable to other supermarket wellness programs and is instead more on par with health-based subscriptions like Amazon’s One Medical subscription, which costs roughly $12 monthly.
Hawkins said he thinks Hy-Vee’s pricing is “reasonable” given the offerings.
“I think Hy-Vee’s challenge is going to be getting shoppers to see the company as a serious health & wellness service vs. just a grocery store,” Hawkins wrote. “That being said, given Hy-Vee’s focus on health & wellness historically and strong pharmacy operation they probably have less of a perception gap than another supermarket retailer might have.”
Hawkins expressed surprise that Hy-Vee did not tie benefits to the pharmacy via reduced prices on relevant medications to the subscription.
In announcing the new membership, Hy-Vee spotlighted its existing efforts focused on health and wellness, including its team of dietitians, availability of select services in Spanish and preventative health screenings for cholesterol, A1c and more. The Midwestern grocer also noted that its dietitians can provide customers with store tours and product recommendations.
At the start of last year, Hy-Vee launched WholeLotta Good, a ship-to-home site offering more than 5,000 better-for-you products, as well as wellness tips, as its latest in a series of ship-to-home sites.
Other companies within the grocery industry are also looking to tap into consumers’ desire for connecting health and wellness services to their grocery shopping.
Kroger and Instacart are also growing their food-as-medicine offerings. In February, Albertsons launched “Sincerely Health,” an online platform to help shoppers make decisions related to nutrition, exercise, sleep and self-awareness and provide them rewards for meeting health-related goals. Schnuck Markets last year rolled out a free program to help shoppers track their purchases of items that meet guidelines for healthy eating.
“Kroger and Walmart are aggressively going after pharmacy and clinics in the store so I would expect we’ll see something there soon. … There are other personalized services that are made available through certain insurance companies but Hy-Vee gets credit for jumping out in front,” Hawkins said.
Several grocers have focused on providing tailored services to customers. In March, Natural Grocers, for example, debuted in-store, personalized shopping experiences with its nutritional health coaches at select locations.
Last year, Heinen’s opened a Personalized Nutrition Center inside a store in Mayfield Village, Ohio, to provide dietary counseling that can also include a diagnostic panel. The year prior, the regional grocer unveiled Club Fx, a free membership program offering nutrition guidance tools, a coaching program and proprietary blood tests that is available to people signed up for the grocer’s Tasteful Rewards loyalty program.
