Waitrose, John Lewis and Vitality team up with Olympic heroes to help improve customers’ health and wellbeing as lockdown eases

Wednesday 3 June 2020

Waitrose, John Lewis and health and life insurer Vitality is this week launching a series of free virtual workshops focused on health and wellbeing, exclusively for myWaitrose and myJohn Lewis members. The programme has been created to help address some of the undesirable "side effects" of lockdown including poor posture from lengthy spells of home working, disturbed sleep or unhealthy eating habits. 

From this week, the retailers’ members are being invited* to book onto a range of free live classes, including: 

• Talks from in-house Waitrose nutritionists on making healthier food choices and how to meal plan;
  
• Sessions on the importance of sleep and top tips on creating the perfect bedroom environment with John Lewis bed buyers;
  
• Family Fitness classes with Vitality’s sporting experts including Olympic swimmer, Lizzie Simmonds, and Olympic Modern Pentathlete Samantha Murray;
  
• Energising cardio sessions run by Vitality’s own in-house clinicians and coaches**;
  
• Posture principles, including a session with Olympian Lord Seb Coe and a Vitality Physiotherapist

Classes will take place every Wednesday throughout June. 

Peter Cross, Partner & Director of Customer Experience at Waitrose and John Lewis, comments: “Lockdown will have taken its toll on us all in different ways, whether it’s long hours working on an unsuitable chair in our bedrooms, unhealthy snacking, disturbed sleep or lack of proper exercise, as well as the impact on our mental health. We're really excited to be doing our bit to help and have created a broad range of content with some of the nation's superstars as well as our own in house experts to look at wellbeing from a variety of angles - we hope that there's something here for everyone however small."

Swimming Olympian, Lizzie Simmonds from Vitality said: “Our health and wellbeing, and that of our family, has never felt more important than it does right now, yet the biggest challenge many people face when trying to get more active is knowing how to get started or to fit exercise into their lives.

“We’ve designed these workshops to offer something for everyone, from children to adults, with more traditional exercise classes, right through to fancy dress activity classes in the garden. Vitality’s core purpose is to make people healthier and enhance and protect their lives, and I’m delighted to be part of their partnership with Waitrose and John Lewis, and taking part in these workshops, inspiring many more people to get active.”

The workshops are underpinned by the partnership Waitrose and Vitality announced earlier this year. Both VitalityHealth and VitalityLife members can also access cashback of up to 25% - or up to 40% for members with both life and health insurance - on the supermarket’s Good Health food range in Waitrose shops and on Waitrose.com***.

The amount of cashback available directly correlates with the level of physical activity a member has done the previous month. Members earn points each time they engage in the Vitality Programme, with points available for being physically active, such as walking, running, cycling or swimming by using a linked activity tracking device.

Waitrose customers can also get healthy tips, recipes and advice from the supermarket’s Waitrose Health magazine, in stores now (free for myWaitrose members or £3). 

A range of other virtual services have been launched by both Waitrose and John Lewis in recent weeks, including nursery, home and styling advice services.

*myWaitrose and myJohn Lewis members will be emailed with booking details. 

** Vitality’s clinicians and coaches work within the workplace wellness team, which is made up of industry professionals with qualifications in areas such as physiotherapy, physiology, personal training, positive psychology and nutrition. They work with businesses offering a range of services to improve employees' wellbeing in the workplace.

*** Join Vitality on an eligible plan and you could get up to 25% cashback on selected Waitrose & Partners Good Health products (excluding beverages) when you get active. Get a second eligible health or life insurance plan, and receive a Vitality Pink boost, with up to 40% cashback. 
Terms and conditions apply.

About the John Lewis Partnership

The John Lewis Partnership owns and operates two of Britain's best-loved retail brands - John Lewis & Partners and Waitrose & Partners. Started as a radical idea nearly a century ago, the Partnership is the largest employee-owned business in the UK and amongst the largest in the world, with over 80,000 employees who are all Partners in the business. For all intents and purposes, the Partnership is a social enterprise; the profits made are reinvested into the business - for customers and Partners. John Lewis & Partners operates 50 shops across the UK (36 department stores, 12 John Lewis at home and shops at St Pancras International and Heathrow Terminal 2) as well as johnlewis.com. Waitrose & Partners has 338 shops in England, Scotland, Wales and the Channel Islands, including 61 convenience branches, and another 27 shops at Welcome Break locations. Waitrose & Partners exports products to more than 50 countries worldwide and has nine shops which operate under licence in the Middle East. The retailer's omnichannel business includes the online grocery service, Waitrose.com, as well as specialist online shops including waitrosecellar.com for wine and waitroseflorist.com for plants and flowers. Our food business is bigger than our non-food business and our John Lewis shop sales represent less than a quarter of the Partnership’s total revenue.