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Health Clubs: Healthy Foods for Families Increase Profits

By Paul Fleming

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Published: 10Nov2009
Word count: 548
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More health clubs are catering to families today, realizing that keeping members and their families together can be an effective strategy for maintaining membership. Many clubs already offer child care, but an increasing number are carving out valuable real estate for kid's programs, which can be marketed as a value added luxury to help attract parents to a facility. This includes offering healthy foods for kids and their parents.

Nutrition for Kids

In today's hectic world, busy parents often succumb to the pressures of time by satisfying a child's hunger at the local fast-food joint, all because they didn't have time to plan, and no healthy alternative was readily available. Let's face it, sometimes the tail wags the dog and life takes over!

Health club owners who already have a juice bar or café can seize this opportunity to reach members who are zipping away after a workout with kids in tow; adding healthy shakes and snacks for the kids can dramatically increase profits. This piece of your club's real estate could yield a tangible return on your investment while you offer your members and their children superior nutrition.

Why do Kids Need Nutrition?

Kids constantly need nutritious food because they are growing at an incredible rate; nutrients in food are the building blocks of strong cells that lay the foundation for a healthy body. A well balanced meal promotes healthy growth both mentally and physically.

Nutritious Foods are Important for Adults Too

Although eating nutritious foods is especially important for kids, adults need them almost as much. Some may suggest "Our bodies are already well developed, so we don't need nutritious foods; our bodies can adjust," but that's an unwise argument. The cells in our bodies have a limited life span and continue to regenerate. Each cell lives a maximum of one year; most of them less. In fact, 98% of all cells in our bodies will die and regenerate in one to nine months at least once. Just consider the cells that line your stomach; 50 million of these cells die and are recreated every two days!

Good Dietary Choices Affect Kids Lives

Simply put, giving kids nutritious foods will not only give them strong cells and strong bodies, but also the ability to make the right choices for the rest of their lives. Eating an occasional piece of junk food won't hurt anyone, but showing kids that nutritious food can be delicious and fun is important. Helping parents do this offers health club and fitness operations a big opportunity.

The Benefits of Offering Healthy Foods for Families

Businesses that act to help parents make the right choices for their kids by offering healthy foods will see several benefits. First, the profit potential of offering healthy food choices in a club or gym can be enormous; offering healthy snacks and meals to kids and their parents will increase revenue. Second, a juice bar or café at a fitness facility is considered an additional amenity that not only attracts new members, but retains existing ones. Lastly, the fitness facility helps the parents feel good about themselves for making the "right" nutritional choice and, in turn, the parents feel good about the business. Therefore, providing nutritious food options for members and their kids benefits everyone: kids, members and the business.

Paul Fleming represents Dan Young who is President and CEO of Performance Food Centers, an industry leader in the planning, design, operation and supply of juice bars across North America. Serving over 910 juice bars, fitness centers and cafes that offer healthy fitness smoothies, snacks, coffees and teas, Performance Food Centers offers expertise in every facet of juice bar business.

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