“All non-locally controlled groceries, food markets, convenience stores, and pharmacies are encouraged to display lactation support information near infant formula/foods and to prevent local advertising of formula. This information may not be provided by the formula industry.”
— Step 8.4, Ten Steps to a Breastfeeding Family Friendly Community
Why Step 8.4 Matters
Infant feeding choices are shaped by the environments in which families live, shop, and make daily decisions. Step 8.4 is about transforming these everyday spaces—particularly retail settings that sell infant formula and baby food—into environments that affirm, inform, and support breastfeeding families without promoting commercial formula marketing.
Every parent who walks into a grocery store or pharmacy looking for baby food, diapers, or formula is met with a barrage of commercial messaging—almost always promoting infant formula. These environments are rarely neutral, and certainly not supportive of breastfeeding.
Step 8.4 exists to change that. It calls on national retailers—pharmacies, grocery chains, convenience stores, and supermarkets—to place community-generated, non-commercial lactation support information in the infant feeding aisle, and to remove industry-sponsored formula advertising from their shelves.
This step is vital to health equity and informed choice. Formula companies spend millions on advertising to influence new parents, yet evidence-based breastfeeding resources are rarely placed in the same eye-catching retail spaces. Step 8.4 seeks to correct this imbalance by ensuring that non-local retail chains serve as allies in public health, not gatekeepers of corporate marketing.
What We Did in Durham
In Summer 2025, Breastfeed Durham’s Policy Coordinator Samantha Sallee, MPH student, took bold steps to implement Step 8.4 across Durham County. As part of her practicum with Breastfeeding Family Friendly Communities, Samantha:
- Created bilingual lactation support info cards for retail display in English and Spanish
- Targeted non-locally controlled stores—including Harris Teeter, Walgreens, and CVS—where formula marketing is most prominent
- Educated store managers about the purpose of Step 8.4 and invited them to join our community-wide campaign to reduce marketing bias
- Provided ready-to-use signage with affirming language, QR codes linking to lactation support, and clear messaging not funded by formula manufacturers
Her efforts resulted in a comprehensive Breastfeeding-Friendly Policy Toolkit, now available internally to support future advocacy. It includes:
- Email templates for store leadership
- Sample policy language for managers
- Printable outreach cards for store aisles
- Strategic guidance for community follow-up
Through this toolkit and outreach campaign, Breastfeed Durham developed a replicable model for Step 8.4 that other communities can now use and build upon.
What We Learned
We weren’t surprised. We know this barrier doesn’t start in Durham. It’s a national problem—rooted in a culture that still doesn’t fully normalize breast, chest, and human milk feeding. And while we’ve done powerful, transformative work in our local community, that impact stops at the corporate borders of national chains. Despite our best efforts and well-crafted materials, every national grocery store declined to participate. No signage was placed. No policies were updated. No corporate interest was expressed.
We’re Closing This Chapter
We’ve done our due diligence:
- We reached out respectfully and professionally.
- We created bilingual materials to remove language barriers.
- We made the offer easy and free to participate.
- We followed up.
- We documented everything.
We’re proud of what we built—but we’re also realistic.
We are not pursuing Step 8.4 further with national grocery and convenience stores at this time. We’re shifting our energy toward more promising partnerships.
But… There’s Bright News from the Pharmacy Aisle
While national grocery chains declined to partner, our pharmacy outreach—led by Jess Woon—has been a bright spot.
Her work has been methodical, compassionate, and effective. By February 2026, we anticipate that every national pharmacy in Durham will have been contacted about Step 8.4.
(And remember: most grocery stores have pharmacies in them. Even when we couldn’t influence the store directly, we often gained a foothold through the pharmacy.)
Even better? Most of Durham’s chain stores are located in shopping centers filled with locally owned businesses. Thanks to our broader community engagement efforts, we’ve been able to surround those national stores with Breastfeeding Welcome Here clings and community affirmations in every direction.
📝 We’ll be sharing more about Jess’s work, wins, and lessons learned in a future blog post focused on pharmacies. Stay tuned.
Visit our pharmacy outreach hub →
What We Gained
Even when the answer is no, the effort matters. Thanks to Samantha’s work, we now have:
- A clear Step 8.4 strategy and toolkit for future communities
- Bilingual, ready-to-use materials for advocates
- A realistic understanding of the barriers posed by corporate formula marketing
- A permanent record of outreach efforts that can inform national advocacy
- And most importantly: evidence that we tried—we acted, we educated, we invited participation
Final Thoughts
Step 8.4 was never going to be easy. It requires confronting powerful systems and asking them to prioritize families over profit. While no grocery stores agreed, we leave this chapter proud—of what we created, how we showed up, and the clarity we now have.
Sometimes, change takes time. Sometimes, just asking a question is what sets change in motion.
And maybe one day, you’ll walk into your local store and find a shelf that finally welcomes breastfeeding families with the dignity and affirmation they deserve.
Every store manager we educated, every staff person who saw our materials—if even one of them smiles and welcomes the next breastfeeding parent through their doors, we’ve done our job.
Paperwork isn’t as important as attitude.
The work continues—just in different aisles.