In partnership with their local hospital and CPPW-funded health department, Kwik Trip convenience stores, headquartered in La Crosse, Wisconsin, joined the 500 Club, highlighting healthier alternatives to customers in all twenty-one of their La Crosse county stores. All 113,758 La Crosse County customers can now easily find convenient, affordable healthy options, including fresh fruit that costs less than a bag of chips. Kwik Trip saw their efforts as so successful that they've chosen to bring the 500 Club to thirty more stores in neighboring Minnesota and Iowa. Kwik Trip Retail Food Service Director Paul Servais explains, "We heard from our customers that they were looking for more healthy options. We heard some people say not to go to convenience stores because there is nothing healthy to eat in them. We knew at Kwik Trip we had healthy options. This was a great way to get that message out."
La Crosse's Farm2School program is helping Wisconsin kids eat Wisconsin food. Over 5,000 students are eating and learning how to cook locally-grown foods including cabbage, beets, wild rice, potatoes and winter squash, grown by local Wisconsin farmers, and prepared locally instead of being shipped in from California, Florida or even Chile. Local food processing facility Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen pre-processes the food to reduce labor costs in the school kitchens, and had to add a third shift to keep up with the new demand. 8,500 cups of fresh fruit and veggies were served on kids' lunch plates by the end of 2010, and money is being put back into the local economy - plus helping make sure those kids grow up healthy and strong.
Learn more about La Crosse's CPPW work.
Read the original profile on the CDC website.