“- Grandson, have you ever eaten such salads in your life?”
In Ion Creangă’s famous “Harap-Alb” tale, “some very wonderful salads” were so important that they turned into a challenge for the main character. However, the reality shown by today’s statistics is not quite fairy-tale-like. Every year, Romanians consume increasingly smaller amounts of fruits and vegetables. At the same time, our country has been steadily occupying, for a long time, the last place in the European Union in terms of fruit and vegetable consumption. Public interest messages, alarming press articles, nutrition influencers’ videos, all fail to put fruits and vegetables at the top of Romanians’ shopping list.
It’s a context in which Piata Lidl also took on a note of adventure, with trials and obstacles like any initiative that aims to change behaviours. Piata Lidl’s strategy integrates a strong focus on local production, ensuring freshness every day, and promoting sustainable agriculture. All are indispensable conditions to increase the consumption of fruits and veggies, along with maintaining affordable prices. Launched 5 years ago, the “Switch to Freshness!” platform helped Romanians quickly and easily find information about all products from Piata Lidl, such as their origin, quality, or supplier.
So, the beginning of 2024 was the right time to turn Piata Lidl into a movement. The communication platform “Take something from the market!” is based on a psychological mechanism aiming to provide availability and reverse the classic process where action follows motivation. Just like the water bottle on the desk helps us improve daily hydration. It’s not just a reminder, it’s right there when we know we should drink water but wouldn’t do it otherwise. Similarly, without acting accordingly, many Romanians are aware of the importance and benefits of consuming fruits and veggies. Instead of repeating the same reasons in different words, the “Take something from the market!” movement introduces a solution in the spirit of Lidl simplicity: add freshness to the list every time you go shopping. The shortest path to Romanians’ plates begins in the shopping basket, so that fruits and veggies become a natural element of everyday life. And the thought that we should include them in our daily diet no longer seems as distant as the “Bear’s Garden” from the Harap Alb story.
We hope our story has hit its target: take something from the market!
