Marleen de Jonge
Project Coordinator
Living Labs
Piloting a new way of working towards healthier choices as the default
Living Labs at the point of sale
Consumers increasingly want to eat healthier, yet everyday food choices are still largely shaped by convenience, price and availability. At supermarkets, foodservice outlets and other points of sale, healthier options are not always the easiest or most obvious choice.
At the same time, these points of sale offer one of the strongest opportunities for change. What is offered, how it is presented and what becomes the default strongly influence what ends up in shopping baskets and on plates. At Foodvalley, we believe this is where meaningful, scalable progress towards healthier diets can be made.
Why Living Labs?
Despite many initiatives to promote healthier eating, large-scale change remains difficult. While awareness has grown, the food environment has changed only marginally. Healthier products often struggle to gain sufficient visibility, rotation and commercial traction, partly due to tight margins, short evaluation periods and commercial risk.
If healthier products are to become the default choice, they must prove that they can work within existing commercial realities. That requires learning in real-life settings, not just through theory, but through practice.
What we do
Foodvalley initiates Living Labs at the point of sale: real-life pilots in which retailers and producers collaborate in a pre-competitive setting. In these Living Labs, we test how changes in:
- assortment balance
- placement and visibility
- presentation and defaults
can support healthier choices while remaining commercially viable.
How we work
Together with our partners, including behavioural research experts, we ensure that learning is grounded in everyday practice and directly applicable across different points of sale. We:
- test in real retail and foodservice environments
- combine consumer behaviour insights with commercial performance data
- give interventions sufficient time to learn what works
- translate results into practical, transferable frameworks
The Living Labs are not one-off experiments. They are designed to generate practical insights that can inform a different, more structural way of working at the point of sale.
From pilots to a new way of working
The Living Labs build on earlier pilots and are designed to scale learning beyond individual tests. The ultimate goal is a transition towards food environments in which healthier products gradually take a more prominent place and finally become the default rather than the exception.
Who can join?
The Living Labs are intended for organisations that want to move beyond isolated interventions and are willing to explore change in practice:
- Retailers and foodservice operators seeking to strengthen healthier assortments without undermining commercial performance
- Producers and brands offering healthier products that struggle to gain traction at the point of sale
- Policy makers and funding providers interested in practical, evidence-informed approaches to healthier food environments
The Living Labs initiative is not intended as a short-term product test, but as a structured collaboration focused on learning, iteration and scalable impact.
Discover how the Living Labs can work for you in practice
For retailers and foodservice companies
Explore how healthier assortments can work in your stores and test what works before you scale. Participate in the Living Labs and gain practical insights into how healthier choices can be integrated into your existing assortment without compromising commercial performance. Develop a future-proof approach at the point of sale andwork with Foodvalley and partners to explore new ways of working that align health ambitions with everyday commercial realities.
For producers
Give your healthier products a fair test in real-life settings. Join the Living Labs to explore how placement, visibility and defaults influence performance at the point of sale. Understand what drives performance at the point of sale and gain insights into how consumers interact with your products in everyday retail or foodservice environments.
For policy makers and funding providers
Interested in contributing to change at the point of sale? Gain access to real-world evidence on interventions that influence consumer behaviour. Explore practical interventions that complement existing health and prevention policies. Support the development of scalable solutions that align public health goals with commercially viable food environments. Enable cross-sector collaboration between retailers, producers and other value chain partners.
Initiated pilot projects
2026 – Larger pilot at the point of sale in supermarkets
Context and approach
Retailers and foodservice companies operate within tight margin structures and short evaluation periods. Around 80% of newly introduced products are delisted within the first year. Even when healthier alternatives perform reasonably well, they frequently substitute existing products rather than generate incremental growth, further weakening the business case.
We see clear opportunities at the point of sale to further develop assortments and presentation in ways that support healthier behaviour. Not by limiting choice, but by making the healthier option the obvious, easy and commercially viable default on the shelves. Together with Bamboo Brands, we set up this Living Lab pilot in several supermarkets. The objective is to determine whether an intervention in shelf layout contributes to a demonstrable shift towards healthier purchasing choices by consumers, and sustainable commercial performance for retailers and suppliers.
The living lab approach explicitly takes into account differences between product categories, consumer habits, purchasing frequency and margin structures.
More detailed information about this pilot can be found here >
2025 – Healthier snack lunch offer for students at Jumbo supermarket in Zetten
Context and approach
Foodvalley conducted two retail pilots together with JOGG and Jumbo Supermarkets at the Jumbo store in Zetten. The pilot focused on secondary school students and tested healthier snack-lunch options in a real-life supermarket setting, fully integrated into the existing store layout and routines.
Conclusion
While the pilot was relatively small in scale and limited in duration (two periods of six weeks), it provides an initial indication that healthier variants can be introduced without disrupting commercial performance. If a similar approach were applied to just 10% of the total retail product portfolio, even just year-round, the potential impact would be amazing, delivering meaningful health benefits for society.
2025 – Tasting and selection of products at secondary school in Zetten
Context and approach
As part of the pilot preparation, we organised a student survey and product tasting at a secondary school in Zetten. The aim was to better understand students’ current eating and purchasing behaviour during school days, while allowing producers to test their products directly with this key target group and gather real-time feedback on taste, appeal and positioning.
Conclusion
Healthier alternatives have strong potential when they align with existing taste preferences, visual expectations, price levels and convenience standards. Importantly, enjoyment should not be compromised. Products that are positioned too explicitly as “healthy” tend to lose attractiveness among students. This highlights the crucial role of subtle labelling, smart communication and product familiarity in increasing the uptake of healthier choices.
Interested in joining our Living Labs initiative?
By learning together in real-life environments, retailers and suppliers can reduce risk, build confidence and take concrete steps towards food environments that support healthier choices while remaining commercially viable. This is how ambition can be translated into everyday practice on the shelf, at the counter and ultimately on the plate.
We are here to discuss your specific needs that meet our common objectives. Please do not hesitate to contact us!