Whole Foods links up with Headspace on recipes, meditations

Dive Brief:

Whole Foods Market has teamed up with meditation app developer Headspace on a cross-platform collaboration marketed as a way to help consumers have positive feelings about food, the grocer announced on Thursday.
The offerings include meditation exercises and a video series called Food for Mood on IGTV, Instagram's app for watching longer, vertical videos.
The collaboration builds on Whole Foods' recent efforts to tie its private label products with digital tools encouraging cooking and taps into consumers' interest in health as wellness during the pandemic in particular — a trend grocers are increasingly responding to with new health initiatives.

Dive Insight:

The collaboration includes three meditations focused on shopping, cooking and eating, along with recipes that have accompanying videos on Whole Foods' Instagram. For the recipe videos, Sophia Roe, a chef and food and welfare advocate, prepares each dish with Dr. Uma Naidoo, a psychiatrist, chef and nutrition specialist, as they talk about the health benefits of the ingredients. In the first recipe video, they make a gluten-free baked berry crunch.

Upcoming videos will include seared scallops with jalapeño crema, which is a less thick version of sour cream; green tea and coconut-poached halibut with sautéed kale; and turmeric tempeh with chamomile steamed asparagus. The recipes are available online with shopping lists that include a bevy of Whole Foods-branded ingredients. The rest of the videos will roll out through the end of March, according to the announcement.

The announcement cited results from a survey of 2,155 U.S. adults from Feb. 4-8 by The Harris Poll on behalf of Whole Foods. The survey found that 85% of respondents want to improve their overall health and happiness, both physically and mentally, and that 79% want to learn how to eat more mindfully.

The partnership with Headspace allows the grocer to provide meal inspiration that encourages shoppers to head to Whole Foods and build up positive associations with not only food, but also with the grocer. It builds on Whole Foods' efforts last summer, where the grocer spotlighted its refreshed 365 private label line with a marketing and education campaign that included free virtual classes through a platform called Teachable.