As part of its national back-to-school campaign, “Good Food Drive,” Healthy Planet will donate 300,000 non-GMO, kid-friendly ingredients through local food banks in Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver to help families prepare healthy meals at home.

For every participating product purchased, identified by a special apple icon, the Canadian organic grocery store chain will donate $1 worth of nutritious staples to local food banks, contributing up to $50,000 in product value during the nine-week drive, from Aug. 1 to Sept. 30.

Ashish Khera, CMO for Healthy Planet, tells strategy the campaign highlights the growing concern over not just food insecurity, but nutrition insecurity, a situation where many families rely on food banks that lack healthy options. Khera offers some sobering statistics that informed the campaign: that one-in-three food bank visitors is a child, and more than 50% of calories consumed by Canadian children generally come from ultra-processed foods, contributing to poor dietary health.

Khera says that while back-to-school is the retailer’s third-quarter tent-pole, with the grocer routinely seeing a 15% to 20% lift in lunchbox and snack categories, the “‘Good Food Drive’ is the first time [Healthy Planet has] attached a large-scale social-impact component to that seasonal momentum.”

Another first is the chain’s “retailer-plus-brand match,” wherein brands contribute a maximum as per their respective size, and Healthy Planet covers marketing costs and the 60% to 75% remainder of the food donations. “That shared-value formula is new for us,” Khera adds.

According to research, grocery budgets spike in August and September, when “shoppers want a tangible, low-friction way to help other families during that pinch,” Khera says. “Parents have told us they feel guilty when cheaper, highly processed foods are the only affordable option. Donating the same clean staples they’d choose themselves helps close that gap.”

Another insight that Healthy Planet has leveraged for the campaign is that iconography works. “Quick testing showed that an on-shelf symbol (the green apple) outperformed text-only signage in drawing attention to cause-related products,” Khera points out.

The initiative aims to appeal to a broad audience, from health-conscious parents and wellness shoppers to community advocates and local media focused on parenting and nutrition. To reflect this, Healthy Planet has built a fully integrated mix. The campaign will appear in-store on shelf danglers featuring a green-apple icon to help identify every participating SKU and call out the “$1 food donation” mechanic.

It will also appear digitally through a dedicated “Good Food Drive” hub on its website, paid social (Meta, TikTok, Pinterest), search, Flipp digital flyer placement and CRM pushes (email and SMS), and through PR partnerships with Daily Bread and other food banks, plus nutrition-focused creators sharing unboxing content and donation staples. Additionally, a live ticker will be added to Healthy Planet’s site, sharing the campaign impact as food donations are converted to meals “meals families can cook at home,” so shoppers can watch their impact grow.

For OOH and print, static and digital billboards will be placed in Ontario, in the Globe & Mail’s national print products and on transit ads around family heavy neighbourhoods.

As part of its larger marketing strategy, Healthy Planet is encouraging product-not-cash donations. “We’re sending the exact kind of better-for-you items parents want – oats, nut butters, honey, hemp hearts – rather than a generic cheque,” Khera adds.