Hy-Vee's Megan Callahan, MS, RD, LD, Corporate Registered Dietitian, on New Subscription Model for Health and Wellness
By Stephanie Schultz, RD Ambassador to the RDBA
Hy-Vee has launched a new subscription program to help individuals create a personalized health and wellness plan. We interviewed Megan Callahan, MS, RD, LD, Hy-Vee Corporate Registered Dietitian, to get a full description of how the subscription works and what retail dietitians can learn from this program.
Your subscription service is new, but Hy-Vee Healthy You is not. Can you explain the pillars/offerings available from Hy-Vee Healthy You?
The Hy-Vee Healthy You Subscription offers a new all-inclusive version to our customers. The offerings break down into the follow categories:
- Individual Consults and Care
- On-Demand Fitness Videos
- On-Demand Nutrition Classes
- Wellness Challenges
- Health Screenings
- Small Group Support
What was the impetus for the subscription model?
Our Hy-Vee Dietitian team wanted to create a health focused community for our customer base where customers could interact with all of our dietitian services in one place and get additional tips, recipes and regular communication from our dietitian group.
We offer a wide variety of services, and we wanted to simplify the process for our customers. With the new Hy-Vee Healthy You subscription model, the customer is now choosing to work with us consistently and wanted to offer savings to our consumers who interact with our team on a regular basis. Another benefit of this model is that customers can use any Hy-Vee Dietitian programming and adjust as needed to their current needs.
Has the initial response been what you anticipated?
The dietitian team is excited about our customers’ initial response in the first week. We are confident this will help our customers, and they will enjoy having all of our programs in one location and the additional perks that come with a subscription model.
How many dietitians are on the Hy-Vee team in total? Given the virtual option, the dietitian team can cover "all" store locations. Is that accurate?
We currently have 38 registered dietitians on staff and working to build on our program’s success with six new current dietitian openings. With the virtual component of our programming, we can serve more than 285 stores across an eight-state region.
Are the online/virtual offerings an outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic?
Our virtual and online offerings began during the COVID-19 pandemic and sped up the process of having these options available. Through offering live, in-person, virtual, and on-demand programming, we've found that our customers still prefer group options in the comfort of their homes and on their own time.
How often are the content offerings updated?
Content offerings are updated continuously at a minimum of one to two times per month.
Specific to retail RDs:
What should fellow retail dietitians know about the program? Any significant hurdles or learnings you've had in building/launching this?
Hy-Vee dietitians offer a wide variety of services and programs to help improve the health of our customers. Sometimes it can be a challenge to incorporate everything we offer in a conversation with new customers, healthcare providers and community members. For example, the Hy-Vee Healthy You subscription provides all our health and wellness services and programming into one exclusive program. As dietitians, we want to help our customers by providing support and guidance to help them improve their overall health and well-being. We walk this journey with them together.
We have been working on the launch of the Hy-Vee Healthy You subscription service and have had learnings along the way. The best advice we can share is to take your time when developing and implementing new health and wellness programs. Ensure this is the right program or service for your business or organization.
What are you most excited about?
The team looks forward to the difference we can make in our customers' lives. Nothing is more exciting than hearing customer testimonials and how their experience has reshaped how they look at food, health conditions and their grocery shopping experience.
What do you think you'll learn?
Our team hopes to learn what interests our customers and see what programs and services they interact with the most. With a wide array of options available to them at one price, we can focus on what programs and services are frequently utilized to help us build on that momentum.
How do you expect this program to evolve?
At Hy-Vee, we inspire to build a health-focused community where we can continue providing engaging content and be a nutrition expert and health resource for our customers. As the program evolves, we will utilize the areas of higher engagement to continue expanding benefit offerings and building out into other Hy-Vee health and wellness services.
