Table 4.

Lessons learned from the Baltimore Healthy Carry-outs intervention

Goal	Method	Outcome
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