Time for a fresh approach

When shoppers first step foot into a Fresh Thyme Farmers Market store, they likely are struck by the realization that they are in no ordinary supermarket. Their eyes take in an abundance of fresh produce, including organic offerings; oodles of natural and organic foods sold in bulk; creative product displays using old-fashioned-looking bushel baskets; an on-wall rendering of the company’s signature tractor icon; and much more — all in a bright, colorful, welcoming environment. (And their children are invited to search for a small tractor toy situated somewhere within the store; tractor finders are rewarded with a small prize.)

Downers Grove, Ill.-based Fresh Thyme Farmers Market makes it clear on its website that its 26,000-square-foot stores are unique by design, combining “the spirit of a weekend farmers market” with the “convenience of a neighborhood store” and “the nutritious offerings of a natural food marketplace.” What’s more, the Fresh Thyme experience is intended to be easy on shoppers’ pocketbooks.

“Fresh Thyme is the perfect option for conventional grocery shoppers who aspire for a better lifestyle and a healthier diet,” Simon Cutts, director of grocery for the Midwest chain, explains to Store Brands. “They find more natural and organic foods at our stores than what they’re seeing in their 80,000-square-foot conventional grocery stores. We offer natural foods at a value every day in a very casual and easy-to-shop 26,000-square-foot facility.”

The newcomer chain — led by Chris Sherrell, formerly president and CEO of Sunflower Farmers Market — is confident that it has the right strategy to succeed. Since its start two years ago with one store in Mount Prospect, Ill., Fresh Thyme has grown tremendously. It now has 41 stores in 10 states.

“And we’re not stopping there,” Cutts stresses. “We’ve got another six stores opening this year. By October, we’ll be at 47 stores, and moving forward we plan to open an average of 20-plus stores a year.”

And as it has expanded, Fresh Thyme also has expanded its definition of the Midwest. Its stores now are located as far west as Nebraska and Iowa, as far south as Kentucky and as far east as Pennsylvania.

“We’re staying in the Midwest,” Cutts explains, “but our definition of the Midwest is a little larger.”

Building a brand

To help fuel its aggressive growth plan and its commitment to value for the shopper, Fresh Thyme launched a private brand program back in September. The first Fresh Thyme Farmers Market brand product to hit stores was coffee; since that launch, the program has grown to 745 SKUs, says Robin Vandenabeele, the company’s director of private label.

The brand stands for “healthy food, healthy values,” she notes, and consists of a mix that’s currently approximately 80 percent “clean” — boasting the absence of 100 specific ingredients — and 20 percent organic.

“Our focus is to improve our communities and to educate the consumer on how to eat healthy — at Fresh Thyme, we don’t believe that healthy eating needs to be expensive,” VanDenabeele says. “We have a brand story on the back that will educate our customer on the difference between organic and natural.”

Own-brand products also boast callouts on the front of the package, Cutts points out — taking a “free-from” approach as opposed to calling the products “natural.” For example, the callouts could show shoppers at a glance that a product is free from artificial colors and flavors, as well as artificial preservatives.

“And right from the beginning, we’ve done front-of-pack nutritionals,” he adds. “So callouts on calorie content, sugar, etc., aren’t hidden on the back; they’re consumer-facing on the front of pack.”

Local is a huge focus, too, Cutts notes. Whenever possible, private brand products are sourced from Midwestern suppliers. Fresh Thyme’s salty snack program comes out of Minnesota, for example, while its coffee program comes out of Michigan. And the retailer’s macaroni and cheese is sourced from an Illinois supplier.

The local approach greatly reduces Fresh Thyme’s carbon footprint and helps support the local communities in which the stores are located, he adds.

“Years from now, we want to be able to look back, show all the Fresh Thyme suppliers on a map and say we supported this many jobs within the Midwest; we brought into the community this much money through our own Fresh Thyme products,” Cutts says.

A new Fresh Thyme distribution center, slated to open this fall in Bolingbrook, Ill., will further bolster private brand-related sustainability efforts, he says. Although the facility will serve mostly as the company’s fresh produce distribution center, as trucks return from delivering produce to the stores, “it creates a great backhaul opportunity” for those same trucks to pick up private brand items and deliver them to the center instead of returning empty.

Of course, the private brand products also retail at price points that mesh with Fresh Thyme’s value promise.

“We’re not trying to sell designer food to rich people,” Simon notes. “We are trying to sell better food options to normal folk.”

Only the beginning

It’s well past the core “pantry-loading-type” product development stage, but Fresh Thyme’s private label program remains in expansion mode. VanDenabeele says she is currently working on building the dairy, deli and produce categories. From there, she’s looking to take the program into premium territory — and also will start building out a pet care program this month.

“We’ll have tiers within different categories — for example, pizza and pasta sauce,” she explains. “Consumers will see a natural and clean option, along with an organic option, too. We’ve also launched a gelato program [and will be] working on ice cream over the coming year.”

Fresh Thyme also plans to partner with suppliers to deliver unique products via flavors and scents when the opportunity arises, Cutts says.

“Private label’s such a great way for us to differentiate ourselves,” he says. “I think there’s something like 29,000 supermarkets in the United States, and they all sell the same mac and cheese. There are only 41 stores right now that are selling Fresh Thyme Farmers Market Organic Macaroni & Cheese.”

Also on the agenda is a plan to perform more cuttings of private brand items versus national brand items, as VanDenabeele recently added to her team.

And a bit of self-manufacturing could be a reality eventually, too, during what Cutts calls phase two or phase three of the distribution center.

“It will come down to our ability to do our own mixing and repackaging; for example, using trail mix, nuts and seeds to really develop our private label repack program,” he says. “That’s where the start of our manufacturing will be.”

A unique look

Fresh Thyme is as thoughtful in its approach to own-brand packaging as it is in its approach to own-brand product development. From the beginning, the company engaged in a multidepartment team effort, forming a core committee, to find packaging inspiration, VanDenabeele says. One of the results coming out of that committee is a palate of 12 core colors.

Conventional (clean-focused) products feature one or more of those core colors, while packaging for organic products has a green-colored bottom portion and a top portion that features one or more of the other 12 core colors, she says. Depending on the packaging’s size, the product might or might not have some sort of illustration. And some packaging for children-oriented products includes fun character illustrations (for example, a bee on the Fresh Thyme Farmers Market Macaroni & Cheese).

“We didn’t want it to be bland or boring,” Cutts stresses. “When I looked at some other programs out there, everything was the same color — black or white. The items look great standing alone, but once you get 700 items together, it’s just a sea of black.”

Fresh Thyme also wanted its store brand products to look like its stores, he says. So the colors are the same colors shoppers see throughout the décor of the store. The packaging incorporates the company’s tractor icon near the brand name, too.

“We are consistent with the Fresh Thyme brand look that the customers have connected with and grown to love,” Cutts says. “When merchandised on end caps and throughout the store, it sends a clear, clean and consistent Fresh Thyme message.”

The packaging evokes a fun and even nostalgic feeling to Fresh Thyme’s customers, too, VanDenabeele says.

“We have found customers even want to put it on display in their kitchens because they love it so much! If you’re walking down the aisle, you’ll know exactly where our private label items are,” she says.

The packaging’s color scheme and design also impressed the judges of Store Brands’ 2016 Store Brand Packaging Awards. When all was said and done, the judges deemed the packaging for the Fresh Thyme Farmers Market natural product line the winner of the Gold award in the “Best Line or Line Extension Across Multiple Categories” category.

Addressing challenges

Any retailer expanding as quickly as Fresh Thyme is — when it comes to both physical stores and private brand items — is sure to experience its share of growing pains.

It can be difficult to keep up with supplier-related communications, VanDenabeele admits.

“We are expanding rapidly and at any given time we may have over 50 to 100 items that are in the pipeline. The greatest challenge often is keeping up with what’s going to launch and when. The team and I remain focused on the launch schedule and the appropriate space allocation for new products.

“It can get crazy,” adds Vandenabeele with a laugh. “There have been some weeks where we launched 30 to 40 items at once!”

The unknown in terms of consumer demand also looms as an issue. For example, sometimes a new product launch will greatly exceed expectations. A recent example is the Fresh Thyme Private Label peanut butter line. The four-SKU line launched and was sold out entirely in less than two weeks. Canned tomatoes, pasta sauce and canned beans had a similar consumer reaction.

So the retailer works to prepare suppliers for this type of scenario — and for a scenario in which every purchase order is generally bigger than the one before it because of the growing store count. Fresh Thyme, therefore, strongly values adaptability on the part of its suppliers.

VanDenabeele has found that, in general, smaller suppliers have been more agile and adaptable than large ones in helping the company to meet its private brand goals.

Of course, outside of the organic realm, suppliers also have to meet Fresh Thyme’s “clean program” commitments — something that many of them are not immediately equipped to do.

“I think suppliers are really starting to understand that clean is important, and I have to say ‘no’ [to some of them],” she says. “And they’ll say, ‘We’re going to work on cleaning this item up, and we’ll be back.’”

Because social responsibility is an important part of Fresh Thyme’s go-to-market approach, the retailer gives preference to suppliers that show a commitment here as well.

“There are important things that we believe in,” Vandenabeele stresses. “Some suppliers have the same passion and ethics that align with ours, which works for us — these are the suppliers we choose as partners.”

A matter of pride

What also sets Fresh Thyme’s private brand apart from many other retailers’ programs is the pride it takes in showcasing the products in stores. In fact, during a recent visit to a Fresh Thyme store, the Store Brands staff noticed numerous displays dedicated to the colorful Fresh Thyme Farmers Market brand items — on end caps, in barrels and on shelves above and below free-standing areas such as the salad bar. And we also saw that the retailer tended toward a brand blocking approach for own-brand items on the store shelves.

Cutts says it was Fresh Thyme’s intention from the very beginning to create a brand that looked great on display and on shelf.

“We see a lot of good private label programs out there that don’t get the representation in the retailers’ stores,” he maintains. “They’re kind of quiet about it, not really shouting about what they do so well.

“The Fresh Thyme team wanted a brand that we could showcase to our customers and be proud of in our stores,” Cutts adds. “We hand-select only the products that offer our customer great value and great quality, at the fantastic prices they have come to expect from Fresh Thyme Farmers Market.”

Looking to the future, Fresh Thyme plans to further build on that big and loud approach to its private brand program. VanDenabeele circles back to the company’s ubiquitous tractor icon for an analogy.

“We believe in the tractor power, as we call it,” she stresses. “And we’re going to keep on increasing horsepower day in and day out to provide creative, healthy new items to consumers.”