Ellie Wilson, MS, RD, CDN, FAND, was one of the first dietitians featured in the Retail Dietitians Business Alliance articles back in April 2013, just a year after the organization’s inception.

Back then, as senior nutritionist for Price Chopper, Wilson developed nutrition resources across the chain’s 128 stores. Now, the manager of lifestyles and wellness programs at Northeast Grocery, Wilson supports nutrition-related business needs not only for Price Chopper, but also Market 32 and Tops Friendly Markets. The three stores merged in 2021 and have 280 locations.

The ARC Health and Wellness Community caught up with Wilson to see what’s happened in the past 12 years. As customer and business needs evolved, she’s created a color-based nutrition attribute program, helping customers make healthier food choices and chairs the Food as Medicine workgroup for the New York State Governor’s Council on Hunger and Food Policy. Wilson’s journey is a blend of clinical expertise and retail innovation, from navigating the COVID-19 pandemic to supporting efforts in food waste reduction. Below is the full interview in this month’s edition of RD Close Up.

Describe your role

I’m the corporate manager of lifestyles and wellness at Northeast Shared Services, the company supporting the Price Chopper, Market 32 and Tops Friendly Markets banners, which merged in 2021. Together, we have 280 stores in six Northeastern states. The banners are all headquartered in upstate New York. My role is very broad — I support QA/private label, marketing and communications and everything in between. Basically, if somebody says nutrition, 99% of the time someone calls me. That does make it a little bit of an adventure, full of diverse work.

Ellie 2024 Van Pic 855x1140

Ellie Wilson poses by the Price Chopper/Market 32 corporate van in fall 2024 after finishing an event. The van is used for parades and on-site needs. (Photo submitted by Ellie Wilson)

Why did you want to work in dietetics and retail?

After I obtained my RDN, I was working in community hospital and cardiac rehab. With student loans to pay, I looked for a part-time role and found a unique opportunity with Hannaford Supermarkets. They have had RDs in a range of roles since the late 1990s. It was a new program, and it struggled to get traction in stores and with shoppers. I began to travel for a new job and could not stay in the role. The opportunity with Price Chopper came up almost 10 years later.

How did you come to work at your retailer?

I always used food labels and store information to support my clients. I was in private practice when I was invited to a meeting with the Price Chopper Manager of Consumer Services Maureen Murphy. Stores were finding more shoppers asking for nutrition and health resources, and she liked some of my ideas. When a new position was approved several months later, she reached out to me. Eighteen years later, I can say it was a career-changing moment, and I’m grateful for everything I’ve learned along the way.

What do you like about it?

First, the spectrum of the work — each week may be supporting private label regulatory and product development, writing nutrition blogs for the website, working on nutrition informatics for digital and shelf tag systems and partnering with regional public health/Food as Medicine initiatives. The role led me to an amazing community of retail RDs and a range of education and skill-building programs. It also led me to work in food and nutrition policy, at the state and national level.

That sounds cool! Can you tell me a little bit more about your Food as Medicine initiatives?

Within six months of starting at Price Chopper, the then-New York State Gov. Elliot Spitzer issued an executive order to establish a new food council, requiring a dietitian or nutritionist from retail. There were very few at the time, and I was asked by the New York State Academy to take the role if I was interested. The Academy had been consulted to connect with potential candidates. The Council has evolved over the years, and I have had the privilege of being reappointed. I currently serve as the Food as Medicine workgroup chair. It has been a unique professional learning experience, allowing me to see across systems where food retail wasn’t always considered part of healthcare, despite the growth of pharmacies in stores. Though recognized as important for food access, grocery stores were not considered important to health care per se, beyond prescriptive prevention programs like WIC.

During COVID-19, just how important grocery stores were to food and wellbeing became clear. In New York, the food council’s long-standing public-private and inter-agency connections helped quickly redirect surplus farm products to retailers and food banks from lost institutional markets. Within two weeks, the New York Department of Agriculture reshuffled supply chains to prevent waste and feed residents. In their role as essential services, retailers like Price Chopper were called on and accepted those farm products. It was a critical support for farmers, communities and shoppers. It was a great effort, ensuring food wasn’t lost and reinforcing the value of these collaborative efforts.

What has been the biggest challenge for you as a dietitian working in the retail industry?

I believe the biggest challenge is the same in retail as it is in healthcare — there is significant room for improving awareness of the profession and how much it brings to foodways, business and individual wellness. Historically, nutrition was not a healthcare or retail business center. Shoppers began asking for nutrition information in stores. Customers often asked the deli team about managing diabetes or the seafood team about heart health. Teammates wanted to offer good customer service, but were not able to assist customers with increasingly more complex needs. Retailers began hiring RDs to meet that need.

Nutrition is a complex issue, with enormous individual and community impacts. It’s clear now that food retail and healthcare both benefit when RDs support how food and health information is communicated, enabling prevention and treatment of food-related chronic issues. RDs are uniquely and critically positioned to engage and activate shoppers. People won’t eat what doesn’t taste good, so ensuring food is culturally appropriate, appetizing and resources are available to prepare it is essential. Being able to help people navigate, person to person, space to space, place to place, is an amazing opportunity, especially in retail. As the most trusted nutrition professional, when dietitians can provide guidance in grocery stores, the value proposition of the store and products in it becomes more holistic and impactful, which in turn supports filling the basket with healthier foods. It’s a value add with significant capacity to position the retailer as a key player in community wellbeing, and it remains an underutilized opportunity.

What is one thing you wish you had known before starting your career in retail?

More about the food business, and the complexity of retail operations. Retailers don’t get enough credit for providing access to the range of foods and products that make our lives easier. They also don’t get credit for the work they do to ensure safety in the food supply. It’s a high energy, dynamic industry. Moving food through the supply chain requires ensuring products meet specifications, are safe and have accurate allergen labeling. It’s about everything from the granular level details to managing the millions of pounds of bananas sold each year. It’s a very rich space, not necessarily in terms of money, but in the variety of work and coordination required to keep the system running effectively.

Has there been anything specific that helped you move forward in your role?

Willingness to learn and ability to pivot. When I first got here, I struggled to understand the retail jargon and acronyms. I had to ask if there was a dictionary for it all. Over time, business operations and communications have changed. Initially, we had small magazines targeting specific groups, like families, babies and pets. These evolved into websites, landing pages and digital promotions like coupons, reflecting the shift in information channels.

A key aspect of nutrition communications is ensuring all communications are clear, actionable scientifically and legally accurate, whether online, via email or in stores. These are regulated by agencies like the FTC, FDA and USDA, and it’s crucial to stay compliant to support brand value. For example, the term “healthy” is a legal standard, and its recent update has made it more robust. When I entered retail, I advised against using “healthy” in marketing because it was a regulated term and not a strong sales or behavior driver. Despite their good intention, items advertised as “healthy” were perceived as unappetizing. This was sometimes true, such as products that added fiber but lacked flavor to make up for gritty textures. In a setting that measures success by sales, it was crucial to leverage flavor and benefits to ensure role value. That remains critical.

Retail RDs also worked to educate our team about food and health in the store, through department training and employee wellness programs. Professionally, retail RDs formed a subgroup with the Academy of Nutrition’s Food and Culinary Dietetic Practice Group. As our numbers grew, we learned to collaborate and share processes to support business growth. That led to the more business-focused RDBA launch.

Is there a program or initiative that you are most proud of?

Once retailers embraced their role in health, it began with scaling information to help shoppers. Wegman’s launched nutrition attributes on private label items and Hannaford launched Guiding Stars. Price Chopper was the first to adopt a shelf tagging program called NuVal, developed at Yale. This program used a proprietary algorithm informed by scientists, dietitians and doctors. Using shelf tags to guide shoppers was a great innovation. Innovation is built on persistent evolution, and I was able to do that with our next effort, the “Know Your Colors” nutrition guides program, on shelves and e-commerce for the past several years. The journey of developing, maintaining, communicating, developing measurements and using it to curate and develop products ensured I could be a strong voice for ensuring Food as Medicine in retail is evidence-based, meaningful and legitimate.

This experience contributed to the Food as Medicine role on the Food Policy Council, combining both clinical and retail perspectives. In all applications, Food as Medicine work requires RDs expertise, because it is translational before it’s transactional. If we can combine retail and marketing knowledge with strong nutrition resources, the benefits and possibilities are enormous.

Have any “hot topics” in the dietetics/nutrition industry impacted the way you do things?

Every week, the ad changes, seasons change and product availability changes. One year we have great citrus, and next year we don’t, so we must be prepared to punt. A recent change for me has been partnering with initiatives like produce prescriptions. In upstate New York, where winters close farm stands, retail plays a crucial role in these systems. Again, the “molecules to masses” RD training and expertise allows us to build nutrition solutions across healthcare, community-based organizations and retail. Win-win-win!

The COVID pandemic really showed how critical retail is to nutrition security and wellbeing. However, for retail to fully embrace this role, it needs to invest in it. Retailers could drive more business through wellness and the “value add” dietitians bring beyond consumer service, marketing or regulatory compliance. Some retailers are already embedding dietitians into category management, which is awesome. I think that’s a great trend that should be expanding as we all move forward.

Bio:

Ellie Wilson, MS, RD, CDN, FAND, is the manager of lifestyles and wellness programs at Northeast Grocery, parent company to Price Chopper/Market 32 Grocery Stores and Tops Friendly Markets, located in Schenectady, New York. She develops and manages nutritional attribution and food and health resources for all three banners’ stores. She supports pharmacy, quality assurance/private label, public relations and sales and marketing teams. She facilitates public-private partnerships, focusing on population health, business and nutrition linkages. Ellie is an appointee to the New York State Governor’s Council on Hunger and Food Policy and chair of the Food as Medicine workgroup. She is active with the New York State Academy of Nutrition and Dietetic Association, (NYSAND), Food Marketing Association (FMI) workgroups, Topco Nutrition Member Advisory Council and Academy of Nutrition Foundation Retail Dietetics workgroup. She is a preceptor for the Sage Colleges Dietetic Internship, and a longtime volunteer for the American Heart Association. Ellie lives in Schenectady, New York, with her husband, Walter, and their son, Don. She loves hiking and boating in the Adirondacks, and beverages on the beach in Massachusetts and Rhode Island (OK, any beach)!