Store health assessment

Store health assessment

The Store Scout App is an easy-to-use rapid assessment tool to give a real-time score on the healthiness of a food store.

Access the app

How to access the Store Scout App

The Store Scout App is available for download from the App Store (Apple) and Google Play (Android). Access is only available to registered users – to access or find out more information please complete the following form or email us at Meaghan.christian@monash.edu

Store Scout access request form

The Store Scout App was developed by Menzies School of Health Research and is owned and managed by Monash University.

How does it assess healthiness?

The Store Scout App was developed as a decision-support tool to rapidly assess the in-store retail food environment against best practice for health, and provide real-time feedback to remote stores. It was updated in 2023 to align with the Healthy Stores 2020 Policy Action Series and new evidence on best-practice contributed by the remote retail sector.

On completing an in-store assessment, the App automatically generates a healthy practice score out of 100 based on the four areas of marketing:

Product availabilityPromotionPlacementPrice promotion

Practice scores are generated for the overall healthiness of the store and seven different food categories:

  Fruit and vegetables  Drinks  Snack food  Meals/convenience foods
  Bread and cereals  Meat and seafood  Dairy and eggs

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Higher scores indicate closer alignment to best-practice for health, that is, healthier options are visible, promoted, and easily accessed and less healthy options are less visible and not promoted.

How does it promote action?

An action plan of suggested evidence-based practices to improve the healthiness of the retail food environment is generated after assessment. For example, making water visible from the front of store removing confectionery from checkout areas. This can be used to facilitate discussion with the store business owners and managers on what might be feasible for their store to implement.

Has it been validated?

The app has been found to be easy and time efficient and has very good inter-rater reliability, and high internal consistency. The latest version is user friendly, with a dashboard tab to help the user navigate between new and existing surveys in the app.

Who can use it?

Health practitioners who have the agreement of the store/s to do a health assessment. On being given access to the App we provide training and coaching.

How has the App been used?

Related projects:

Related publications

McMahon E, Jaenke R, Brimblecombe J A Mobile App to Rapidly Appraise the In-Store Food Environment: Reliability, Utility, and Construct Validity Study JMIR Mhealth Uhealth 2020;8(7):e16971 URL: https://mhealth.jmir.org/2020/7/e16971 DOI: 10.2196/16971

Jaenke, R., Van den Boogaard, C., McMahon, E., & Brimblecombe, J. (2021). Development and pilot of a tool to measure the healthiness of the in-store food environment. Public Health Nutrition, 24(2), 243-252. doi:10.1017/S1368980020002025