Table 4 Lessons learned from the Baltimore Healthy Carry-outs intervention

Recruitment

■ Stratifying stores by ethnicity of owners followed by random sampling

■ Recruitment of comparison and intervention carry-outs that could be more accurately compared

■ Visiting several times before active recruiting

■ Built a rapport and trust with owners

■ Explaining the purpose of the study

■ Appealed to interest of business owners to contribute to the community

Develop rapport

■ Use the same interventionists to visit the carry outs

■ Owners are more likely to trust the individuals they are more familiar with

■ If applicable, learn and use greetings in Korean

■ Cultural sensitivity is shown to carry out owners

■ Discuss store benefits for participation (e.g. gift cards, new menu boards) and benefits to researcher team (improved community health)

■ Owners are much more likely to participate in the study if they are given incentives and understand the research purpose

Motivate owners

■ Provide owners with supplies required of the intervention

■ Simplified receipt collection process; reduce error in data collection

■ Provide initial stock of new items

■ Reduce risk of carrying new item

■ Provide appropriate equipment for food item preparation

■ Owners will not be burdened by additional costs to introduce healthier items and can use the same ingredients, but healthier cooking methods.

Signage feasibility

■ Show owners pictures of food items before displaying them on new materials

■ Owners will be more accepting of picture taking when shown how appealing food photos look

■ Show owners and customers different options for the logo to get buy-in and determine preference

■ Owners and customers more responsive to menu logos

Low burden strategies

■ Menu-labeling and posters advertising healthy items

■ Placed little obligation on already busy business owners

■ Providing high-quality, attractive materials and helping put them up

■ Business owners liked the new materials, which led to higher acceptability