Back to School

The Hain Celestial Group, Inc. is encouraging family health, fitness and togetherness this back-to-school season with two offerings through Sept. 30: The Family Fitness Fun Challenge, at www.TakeaHealthyBite.com, offers fitness-minded families savings on the company’s natural and organic products, and consumers can send in register receipts from their purchases of those items to receive Sports Authority Gift Cards for use in buying sporting equipment and athletic gear to help parents and kids stay in shape.

Health-conscious snackers can enjoy a nutritious nosh anywhere with Go>Nola -- single servings of Nature’s Hand Granola in a convenient, hand-held package that’s also suitable for school lunches and toppings.

With consumer confidence seemingly stuck in neutral, The Nielsen Company forecasts a modest increase in dollar sales on back-to-school items, up 1.7 percent to $2.6 billion, although unit sales are projected to drop.

HEB last week launched its “Stuff the Bus” annual city-wide school supply drive in its hometown of San Antonio to help bring supplies such as pens, pencils, paper, notebooks and crayons to children who need them.

Brookshire Grocery Co.-owned and Super 1 Foods & Discount Pharmacy stores is looking to make packing a healthy school lunch easy with its “Super Fun Lunch” box value meals that are prepared and sold in the deli and are based mainly on NuVal scores.

Shoppers are allocating their budgets differently this year, with a shift to gadget purchases for elementary students, increases in clothing purchases for all age groups and reduced back-to-school budgets for high school students.

Pennsylvania-based grocer Giant Eagle is mounting an in-store donation campaign to support Storehouse for Teachers, a regional nonprofit group aimed at ensuring teachers and economically disadvantaged children get the school and classroom supplies they need.

Sears and Kmart have launched the “Campus 2010” digital program, a multichannel shopping experience to help college-bound students more easily purchase everything they need, from groceries to dorm décor.