Fresh Thyme Farmers Market Expands Its Twin Cities Presence, Opens Two New Stores

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Fresh Thyme Farmers Market expands its Twin Cities presence, opens two new stores

August 8, 2016

TWIN CITIES, MN — Fresh Thyme Farmers Market, a Chicago-based full-service specialty grocer, kicked off its opening week in the Minneapolis suburb of Savage on Aug. 2 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony that included city officials, followed by a Friends and Family event where hundreds of people explored the company’s product offerings, shopped, sampled food and enjoyed live music.

“We’re thrilled to be opening our 42nd store in Savage — we love Minneapolis,” Chris Sherrell, Fresh Thyme’s chief executive officer, said in a news release. “This store marks our third location in the state and we are thrilled to be expanding our footprint here.”

A ribbon-cutting ceremony kicked off Fresh Thyme Farmers Market opening week on Aug. 2 in Savage, MN. Theresa Hamm, store management trainer, Barbara Marschall, Scott County Board of Commissioners chair, Janet Williams, Mayor of Savage, Brent Lein, store manager, and Dave Bernier, vice president of store operations, all welcomed people into the new, farmhouse-feel specialty store.The bright, farmhouse-feel store’s director, Brett Lein, said the local community response to the Friends and Family event was extremely positive. And the

1 / 4 following day, people started lining up early outside the store in order to be one of the first 250 shoppers to receive a free bag of healthy groceries as part of a promotion.

“People lined up at 2 a.m. and the 250th person in line was there by 5:30 a.m.,” Lein said in a news release. The store officially opened its doors for business at 7 a.m.

Also on Aug. 3, Fresh Thyme’s 43rd store and fourth Minnesota location opened in the St. Paul suburb of Vadnais Heights. That store features Fresh Thyme Liquor, the company’s first liquor store in the Twin Cities market.

“We had a great turnout — it was awesome,” Stephanie Polcyn, marketing manager, told The Produce News. “I believe our first person started lining up at 3:15 in the morning. A lot of people are delighted that we opened up in this location. We’ve had a lot of happy customers.”

Scott Wiggans, senior produce specialist for the west region, told The Produce News that Fresh Thyme stores focus on a wide selection of produce items.

“If you count all the specialty items, it’s actually around 700 items,” said Wiggans. “We carry everything we can get our hands on -- conventional or organic. And as we grow and get more buying power, we network more and more locally. With the distribution center opening up [in Illinois in October], we should be able to buy full semis from local farmers and distribute them to our stores and continue to become more and more of a real farmers market in that aspect. We bring in a semi of product, stack it high, and sell it cheap and sell it fast. That’s why at the end of the day the customer wins.”

Fresh Thyme has been described as a hybrid of Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods and a natural foods store. At 28,000-square-feet or less, Fresh Thyme stores are 30-60 percent smaller than a traditional Whole Foods store, while they are two to three times larger than a Trader Joe’s. More than half of the store is used to display fresh produce, meats and seafood. The new Savage location is even smaller than the average Fresh Thyme and it’s definitely passionate about all things local.

“We’re a small store — 18,500-square-feet on the sales floor and six registers up front,” Dave Bernier, vice president of store operations, told The Produce News. “We’re not the 35-aisle, 52-register chain, but we’ll handle our crowds just fine. We’re kind of produce-centric. Produce accounts for about 25-30 percent of our business, whereas at traditional grocery stores it accounts for about 12 percent. We source it locally when possible. We don’t want to be sourcing product from outside of this area if we don’t need to. We want to be more of a neighborhood market that people will really remember — just a great shopping experience.”

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Hundreds of people attended a Friends and Family event after the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new Fresh Thyme Farmers Market in Savage, MN. It’s the company’s 42nd store and its third location in the Twin Cities market.The company recently relocated its headquarters from Phoenix to the Chicago suburbs, where it plans to open the biggest concentration of its stores. Fresh Thyme is aggressively expanding in the Midwest and intends to open between 10 and 12 stores in Minnesota, along with additional scheduled openings in Wisconsin, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois and other new markets. The chain hopes to open more than 60 new stores by 2020.

According to its website and social media pages, Fresh Thyme’s specialty is a robust produce section with organic and local fruits and vegetables, as well as a natural meat department, a full dairy section with primarily local Midwest items, a bakery featuring artisan breads, healthy prepared meals, made-to-order sandwiches and pizzas, a full salad bar, 400 natural and organic bulk food items, gluten-free and dairy-free specialty options, locally roasted coffee, wine and craft beers, earth-friendly cleaning supplies and natural hygiene products, and thousands of health supplement products. It states it’s “on a mission to improve the way our communities eat.”

“We’ve taken the experience of an outdoor farmers market and combined it with the convenience of a full-service grocery store,” Sherrell said in a news release. “Produce is in the middle of the store. Our center store is actually fresh, where the traditional center store is general merchandise products. We’re excited to bring the farmers market concept to the area and create 5,000 new jobs in the next five years.”

And the retailer’s CEO is no stranger to the development of natural and organic specialty stores. Sherrell spent a almost decade working for Colorado-based Wild Oats, which was acquired by Whole Foods in 2007, and then led Arizona-based Sunflower Farmers Market for nine years, which merged with Sprouts Farmers Markets in 2012. That same year, with a major investment from Michigan- based Meijer Inc. Sherrell started Fresh Thyme.

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“The concept behind Fresh Thyme is reaching out and bringing the natural organic lifestyle to the masses, and not making it this huge national chain that is really intimidating to shop at and really expensive,” said Sherrell in a news release. “It is a completely new grocery format for the Midwest.”

Fresh Thyme’s entry into the Twin Cities market comes during a time of stiff competition in the grocery sector. Along with area newcomer Iowa-based Hy-Vee, the stores hope to challenge the dominance of Cub Foods, Target, Wal-Mart, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Lunds & Byerly’s and Kowalski’s. The metro area is also home to several popular food co-ops such as The Wedge, Lakewinds and Mississippi Market.

But Bernier believes that quality products at rock-bottom prices, along with excellent service and friendly staff will be the secret to the success of Fresh Thyme.

“Sales at our Bloomington store [the first Fresh Thyme location in the Twin Cities, which opened in Sept. 2015] are way ahead of projections. We’re double-digits ahead of plan,” said Bernier. “I don’t think anything has changed in retail. If you’re going to be successful, it starts with the people in the building. We interviewed over 600 people for this store and we hired 125 staff members. We want smiles. We can teach all day long but the smile part is a non-negotiable for us. Being engaging with our customers and making them feel at home, it’s like inviting them into our home and making them feel good about shopping here. You can put all this great stuff in the building, but if you can’t sell it and you can’t be nice to the customers walking in the door, that’s what they will remember. We’re trying to make it a memorable experience.”