Best Wellness Concept: Smart Choice Smart U, University of California at San Francisco Medical Center

Smart Choice Smart U innovatively melds a number of technology platforms to provide customers with a highly convenient, easy-to-use wellness aid that encourages participation and makes a huge contribution to the institution’s goals to encourage healthier lifestyles among staff.

By inputting its café recipes into the MyFitnessPal mobile application that tracks food intake and letting customers log their choices through a simple smartphone picture of the bar code, the program makes choosing healthy options easier. But then it goes a step further by integrating the program with the Fitbit activity monitor so customers can track both food intake and caloric expenditure on a single platform.

Extensions of the system include the launch of an online wellness gaming platform early this year that contributes social and competitive aspects to the wellness program. Teams can see their data and compare their performance to more than a hundred other activity teams.

Smart Choice Smart U is also a financial winner, with modest implementation costs: $1,000 per terminal, an annual $1,000 licensing cost for the back-of-the-house solution and around $2,000 for marketing. Meanwhile, salad bar gross sales have leaped from $250,000 to $650,000.

Project Team:

Dan Henroid
Director of Nutrition & Food Services (Concept Originator)
Lisa Faucon
Assistant Manager, Retail Food Services
Conrad Pitheau
Manager, Retail Food Services
Leila Tabrizi
Procurement Supervisor
Gina Chico
Senior Supervisor, Retail Food Services
Jing Pese
Senior Supervisor, Retail Food Services
Jesse Hermogeno
Senior Supervisor, Retail Food Services