Resources galore
Aug 18, 2015
ARLINGTON, VA -- This year, USA Rice updated its retail dietitian toolkit as part of the Think Rice rebranding and the resource is now available on thinkrice.com. These materials are designed to provide retail dietitians with reasons, recipes, and tools to recommend U.S. rice. It also helps increase visibility of U.S.-grown rice in supermarket customer outreach including: blogs, newsletters, social media, in-store radio ads, store publications, and in-store activities.
“Nearly forty-six percent of retailers publish health and wellness newsletters and 90 percent provide healthy recipes to shoppers,” said Paul Galvani, USA Rice Retail Subcommittee chairman. “Retail dietitians are often the decision makers behind which foods are highlighted in these publications, so it’s important that we regularly remind them and make it easy for them to Think Rice and this toolkit does just that.”
The newly designed toolkit contains several consumer handouts that highlight recipes, nutritional information, U.S. rice types and varieties, and steps to building a healthy rice bowl, along with tips for choosing, storing, and preparing rice. Retail dietitians also have access to sample social media posts and ideas for promoting U.S. rice in retail and local media communications.
Yesterday, a retail dietitian from the 200 store Midwest chain Meijer prepared USA Rice’s Greek Rice Stuffed Tomatoes, a recipe featured in the toolkit, live on a local TV news program. The Meatless Monday segment focuses on healthy back-to-school dinners for busy families and features U.S.-grown rice on-set. WDRB News in the Morning on Fox 41 in Louisville, Kentucky has a viewership of 24,000 and the segment and recipe are also posted on the WDRB.com website which receives more than 570,000 unique visitors per month.
“This TV feature is one of the added benefits of reaching this influential audience, and shows how supermarket dietitians reach the consumer beyond the grocery aisle as a credible, third party spokesperson for rice,” added Galvani.
Galvani said USA Rice regularly shares information with a network of dietitians at 34 retailers nationwide.