Allegiance Promotes Healthy Meals With ‘$9 a Day Challenge’

Accessible campaign offers daily recipes, food hacks

1/24/2023

Allegiance Retail Services $9 a Day Challenge, Jacqueline Gomes

Allegiance’s registered dietitian, Jacqueline Gomes, is the face of the $9 a Day Challenge.

Allegiance Retail Services LLC’s Foodtown and Green Way Markets banners have launched a campaign to show inflation-weary consumers how they can prepare three healthy high-quality meals on a budget of just $9 per day, promoted as the $9 a Day Challenge.

A key component of the challenge is its accessibility to consumers: The campaign offers daily recipes for breakfast, lunch and dinner using one primary source of protein for that day, such as chicken or sausage. Foodtown teamed with Kassie Keehn, lead chef of the New York State Public Schools, and Allegiance’s registered dietitian, Jacqueline Gomes, to create the meals, along with helpful food hacks to extend a food budget.

“Our Foodtown and Green Way Market stores are locally owned and family-operated, and therefore are acutely sensitive to how the current economic situation is impacting the families they serve,” noted Donna Zambo, VP and chief marketing officer at Allegiance. “We wanted to be able to deliver high-quality meals on a tight budget that would appeal to adults, but even more so children, who can be finicky eaters. Keehn and Gomes hit home runs with their meal suggestions.”

The recipes include a breakfast sandwich made with chicken that costs $2.45 per serving, and a lentil and sausage stew that costs $1.98 per serving. The most viewed online campaign video to date is the ground beef hack, which shows consumers not only how to stretch their ground beef, but also how to make it more nutritious.

The campaign employs a 360-degree approach to get the word out to consumers, via printed weekly circulars; videos on social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Instagram; in-store promotions; and in-print QR codes.

Iselin, N.J.-based Allegiance provides independent supermarkets such as Foodtown, Freshtown, D’Agostino, Gristedes, Pathmark, LaBella Marketplace, Brooklyn Harvest, Market Fresh, Morton Williams, Big Deal Food Market, Green Way Markets and Shop n Bag with marketing, advertising, technological and merchandising support, as well as a full line of private label products, including Foodtown, Green Way and Rancher’s Legend.