We Operate a Canteen

Your sporting organisation can make many small changes to make a greater choice of nutritious food and drinks available. Even just changing the way you display, price and promote food and drinks can encourage others to make healthy choices.

Some of these small changes you could put into place right away could include:

• Increasing the visibility and promotion of water over sugary (Red) drinks.

• Creating Green food and drink meal deals.

• Reducing or stopping added salt to freshly prepared foods.

• Reducing serving sizes of Amber and Red foods.

The following links contain great ideas for quick and easy changes that may suit your canteen.

VicHealth Nudge Summaries

HEAS Taking Action

Case Study - Making water the drink of choice in sport

If your canteen sells food prepared on site, consider introducing some healthy alternatives. Many sporting organisations are pleasantly surprised with the popularity of freshly prepared healthy foods, even in environments that are traditionally dominated by less healthy options, such as pies and fried foods. 75% of organisations in VicHealth's Healthy Sporting Environments program found that members were still making healthier choices 4 months after introduction of new healthy menu items.

“We sold half the pies and pasties and twice the salad rolls [at the Grand Final this year]….we had to keep making them all day because people kept coming back for them.” Newbridge Football Netball Club

“The introduction of salad rolls to the menu has been very popular. When we first introduced them they sold out very quickly…..We increased the number we made and they still sold out.” Sale United Soccer Club

The following links provide many simple ideas for healthy alternatives, including some ideas that will be popular with children.

HEAS Healthy Food and Drink Ideas

Frozen fruit snacks - Finish With the Right Stuff NSW

BBQs are a popular way to raise funds, cater for large numbers of members and/or spectators, or to simply get your members and supporters together socially. But a BBQ doesn’t have to be limited to a sausage in white bread. There are many healthy alternatives that you can include in your BBQ. The following links provide great ideas that you could introduce.

HEAS - Healthy Barbeques

Heart Foundation - Healthy BBQ Catering

Vending machines

There are small changes that you can make to the contents and layout of your vending machine to provide a greater choice of nutritious food and drinks. Use the following links to assess your vending machine and to reduce the consumption of sugary drinks.

Healthy Vending Machine Assessment

Rethink sugary drink

Other things to consider

While your organisation may have a canteen, there are often occasions when food and drink may be supplied in a less formal environment. These may include:

• An esky /container on the sidelines
• Food stops during travel to and from events

Think about how to include healthy foods from the Green category for these situations, and bring healthy snacks when travelling instead of stopping for fast food.

If you’re still stuck for where to start, it might help to focus on your canteen. Use the following templates to assess your canteen menu against the traffic light system. This should help you find some quick fixes to get started.

You can also ask your members, participants and community members what they think about your canteen’s food and drink options. They might have some ideas for initial changes that can be made quickly and easily.

Menu Assessment Table

Menu Analysis Worksheet

Foodchecker assessment tool

You could also look at other sporting organisations for inspiration. The case studies highlighted further in this section have successfully and cost-effectively introduced small healthy changes to their canteens.

A ‘policy’ is a set of principles or rules that guide an organisation towards its overarching goals. They are generally endorsed by the managing committee or board and published somewhere that everyone can find them.

Research shows that change is more achievable and lasting if it’s backed up by policy. This is because having a policy can help you:

• Communicate a consistent message about healthy eating.

• Plan and agree on a direction for change that aligns with the organisation’s values and priorities.

• Set specific goals and support canteen staff as they make the change.

• Help deal with negative feedback.

A Healthy Eating Policy is most effective when it has the support (or at least the endorsement) of the committee, and is regularly reviewed.

Important points to consider when developing a Healthy Eating Policy include:

• Why – What is it that you want for your organisation?

• Supporting health and wellbeing of members?

• Improving sporting performance?

• Improving/maintaining your reputation in the community?

• Providing a new revenue stream within your canteen?

• What – What will you be changing?

• Expanding healthy food choices?

• Encouraging members to make healthier choices?

• Focusing on junior members?

• Supporting local suppliers?

• How – What changes will you put in place to achieve your goals?

• Setting targets for Green, Amber and Red canteen offerings?

• Making healthy swaps?

• Altering the display of foods?

• Modifying pricing?

• Offering smaller serving sizes?

Research shows that unhealthy food advertising in sporting settings has a strong influence on children’s perception of those foods. It also influences the foods they ask for and buy. This undermines the healthy behaviours that sport tries to encourage.

While unhealthy food advertising has the biggest (and most concerning) impact on children, it also influences adults who participate in sport. A Healthy Sponsorship Policy will support and build on your work to make your sporting organisation become healthier. This may mean you need to find alternative sponsors to fast food chains or businesses that supply unhealthy food.

Some alternatives to unhealthy food sponsors may include:

• Local suppliers of fresh produce, eg. fruit market
• Sporting equipment suppliers
• Local gyms or leisure centres
• Other local non-food businesses (e.g. banks, accountants, real estate companies, pharmacies)

A Healthy Sponsorship Policy may also mean providing non-food rewards on game days and presentation nights. Alternatives to fast food vouchers for achievement awards and/or presentation nights may include:

• Sport collector cards, e.g. football cards
• Music vouchers, e.g. iTunes
• Gym/swimming pool passes
• Merchandise vouchers
• Sports equipment vouchers
• Movie tickets
• Hair cut/style voucher
• Donations to a chosen charity

The link below provides more details about unhealthy food sponsorship and its influence on children. The Healthy Sponsorship template can be adapted to suit the needs of your organisation.

Healthy Sponsorship Template

Obesity Policy Coalition - Unhealthy Food sponsorship in children's sporting settings

Your organisation needs to be aware of and understand its obligations around food allergens so it can protect itself and members. This is particularly important to keep in mind when you are modifying canteen menus and/or seeking new suppliers.

For more information, please read the Department of Health allergen and intolerance fact sheets for businesses.

Food businesses - Food allergen awareness

Sometimes sporting organisations worry that changing their canteen menu might reduce sales and profits. However, many of those that have introduced healthy eating options have reported no negative impact to their sales. Instead, they have found that:

• Adding healthy food and drink choices can bring in new customers who would usually bring their own food to the venue
• Families may have a meal at the organisation rather than eating at home afterwards
• Meal deals encourage members to buy more from the canteen than they would have previously.

“No longer the sole domain of hot pies and donuts, this canteen is proving that salad rolls and soup can be both profitable and simple.” Sale United Soccer Club

You can see how sporting organisations have introduced healthy eating without hurting their profits in the case studies below. If profitability is a concern for your organisation, templates and case studies below can help you to get a better picture of how introducing changes to your canteen will influence profits.

Canteen Finance Assessment

Menu Assessment Table

To successfully introduce healthy eating changes, you might need to trial alternatives, determine the best timing for changes, identify promotional ideas and get feedback from members, visitors and the public.

The following factors have helped organisations make healthy changes:

• Having a good governance and a well-run committee of management in place
• Selecting at least one (but preferably a few) influential members to champion healthy eating changes
• Communicating to members that the organisation is committed to and will help drive healthy eating initiatives
• Highlighting to members how the proposed changes align with the organisation’s long-term goals for culture change and success

The following links provide some further ideas and tips for successful change.

Marketing, Education & Communication

Trouble Shooting

See how AFL Victoria has taken the initiative to educate coaches to lead their players and club communities towards healthy food and drink choices.

See how Netball Victoria has integrated healthy food and drink choices into their NetSetGo program at Port Melbourne Netball Club.

Once you have successfully made some healthy eating changes, keeping up the momentum and being able to pass the baton to new committee members is key to long-term success. This is one reason why developing a Healthy eating policy is recommended. You could also:

• Document your healthy eating journey through
  • Healthy Eating page of your website
  • Newsletters
  • Videos/You Tube clips
  • Social media eg. Facebook, Instagram
  • Annual Reports
• Educate your committee and members on healthy eating, its importance and the steps that your organisation is taking to address this area
• Develop a Healthy Eating sub-committee
• Keep records of food purchased and suppliers and sales history including prices and quantities
• Document what recipes or marketing ideas were tried – and which ones worked
• Include healthy eating as part of a formal succession planning document

The guide to developing a Healthy eating policy may help your organisation to address this issue.

“With the healthy eating module we formulated a policy so that the future committees will have some guidelines to go by.” Axe Creek Cricket Club

The following case studies show how some Victorian sporting organisations have successfully implemented healthy eating changes. For further support in making these changes work for your organisation, contact your State Sporting Association or sport development staff from local government.

If you are in Regional Victoria, Regional Sports Assemblies provide volunteer support, information and training and development opportunities to local sporting organisations in rural and regional Victoria.

Trafalgar Victory Football Club

Valley Sport Regional Sports Association