A corner store intervention in a low-income urban community is associated with increased availability and sales of some healthy foods

Abstract

Objective: While corner store-based nutrition interventions have emerged as a potential strategy to increase healthy food availability in low-income communities, few evaluation studies exist. We present the results of a trial in Baltimore City to increase the availability and sales of healthier food options in local stores.Design Quasi-experimental study.Setting Corner stores owned by Korean-Americans and supermarkets located in East and West Baltimore.Subjects Seven corner stores and two supermarkets in East Baltimore received a 10-month intervention and six corner stores and two supermarkets in West Baltimore served as comparison.Results: During and post-intervention, stocking of healthy foods and weekly reported sales of some promoted foods increased significantly in intervention stores compared with comparison stores. Also, intervention storeowners showed significantly higher self-efficacy for stocking some healthy foods in comparison to West Baltimore storeowners.Conclusions: Findings of the study demonstrated that increases in the stocking and promotion of healthy foods can result in increased sales. Working in small corner stores may be a feasible means of improving the availability of healthy foods and their sales in a low-income urban community.