I’ve been to a lot of nutrition shops and most of them are good and some of them are bad. I believe a nutrition shop should sell the best products in each category so it makes it easy for people to find the best of the best. I am from New Jersey and we have giant stores such as Whole Foods and Wegman’s, to the little mom and pop store. I’ve been to all of them and most of them do not have what I want or think that they should have. Therefore I have put together a list of the Top 10 things a nutrition shop should have in order to make it the best shopping experience a customer might have PLUS gives them the best products for their needs.
- Stack the supplements by ingredients, not brands. Most nutrition shops put their products on the shelf by brands. It is more appealing to the eye and looks better. However this makes it difficult to find the products that I want. Take for example if youre looking for creatine. All of the creatine should be together from all the different companies.
- Have a person knowledgeable about supplements on hand. Most of the time the person working at the nutrition shop really does not have a clue when it comes to supplements and how to pick out quality supplements. The employee of the nutrition shop should be knowledge of the Federal Regulations for Dietary Supplements. When you have knowledge of the code of federal regulations for dietary supplements, this helps you determine which supplements are violating federal regulations and which ones are not. And if they are violating federal regulations, well, most likely the quality of that particular product is low.
- 3rd party testing. I know this might be far off, but nutrition shops should conduct some testing on supplements they carry. Or at least ask their distributors to test supplements or the manufacturers themselves. Wouldnt you feel a lot better if you saw a 3rd party lab analysis on a supplement that you wanted to buy?
- Supplement stacks. A nutrition shop should have a section with supplement stacks. Many supplements work better when they are stacked. Supplements are weak in general, so stacking them helps. They should be stacked in a muscle building category, weight loss, energy, female, male, post workout, etc.
- A Great Juice Bar. Nothing is better than a good juice bar. Whole Food here in NJ is decent and a few other places that I go to, but every nutrition shop should have a juice bar. Then at the juice bar they should have somewhat of an idea of the nutrition macro’s you are getting from one of their juices.
- A great smoothie bar. I know this sounds similar to the juice bar but it aint! Most of the time when I go to different gyms around the country their have smoothie bars. 99 out of 100 times these smoothies are very bad for you. Many chain gyms buy smoothie protein mix…which is such low quality it is not even funny. It loaded with maltodextrin, dextrose, and other krap that just gets you fat. Instead an ideal smoothie should be veggies, a good protein powder, and possibly some creapure brand creatine.
- A Bakery. This I would love to see. Not one single nutrition shop that I have went to have a decent bakery. I would love to see a nutrition shop have a bakery all sorts of healthy foods such as protein bars, muffins, cakes, cookies, and cup cakes. The ingredients are out there to make good tasting healthy high protein foods, but for some reason I never see anyone making good quality baked goods.
- The employees. Ever hear of the saying, which goes something like this…”you can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?”. If I’m about to go inside a nutrition shop and I see 2 employees about side smoking cigarettes, an alarm goes off in my brain. No way am I going to ask these people for advice on health, when they are smoking cancer sticks! And if I see obese employeed working at a nutrition shop as well, alarm bells are going to go off…(unless that person has some sort of medical issue) but if you work at a health food store, you should not be unhealthy by being overweight.
- Bulk protein powder. A nutrition shop should carry bulk protein powder. You should be able to walk in, scoop out the protein powder that you want and have it weighed out.
- Cancer section. Every nutrition shop should have a cancer section. Supplements and foods dedicated to the fight against cancer. These supplements and foods should have anti-cancer properties to them.
Alex Rogers is a supplement manufacturing expert. He has been formulating, consulting, & manufacturing dietary supplements since 1998. Alex invented protein customization in 1998 & was the first company to allow consumers to create their own protein blends. He helped create the first supplement to contain natural follistatin, invented whey protein with egg lecithin, & recently imported the world’s first 100% hydrolyzed whey.
