A Fresh Start for Fresh Thyme
When the senior leadership team at Fresh Thyme Market started thinking about how to celebrate the company’s 10th anniversary this year, the first thing they thought about was cake.
But not just any cake.
They wanted to involve bakers in the local communities across their 10-state store footprint to create a cake that would embody what a Fresh Thyme cake should be: fresh, made from quality ingredients, better for you, and an homage to the retailer’s relentless dedication to community engagement.
In July, the Illinois-based company announced the winner of its 10th Birthday Cake Contest: Crystal Stanley, owner of Crystal Kitchen in Bloomington, Illinois.
"We are thrilled to celebrate our 10th birthday by recognizing the incredible talent of our local bakers, like Crystal, in such a meaningful way," said Liz Zolcak, president at Fresh Thyme Market. "At Fresh Thyme, we're passionate about inspiring a healthier future for our communities and we were just blown away by the response and level of creativity and dedication each and every one of our semifinalists brought to this competition. It just goes to show that Fresh Thyme's broad assortment of innovative and curated items can really spark inspiration in the kitchen, especially as more and more shoppers want options that are healthier for themselves and their families."
[PODCAST: Fresh Thyme Gets Creative in the Healthy Space]
Along with the recognition, Stanley will receive $5,000 and mentorship from a panel of industry experts to help grow her budding small business, Crystal Kitchen, plus a $5,000 donation made in her honor to the Eastern Illinois Foodbank.
Fresh Thyme’s cake competition is just one example of how the company is putting its newly redefined value proposition into practice. Fresh Thyme’s brand promise is to inspire healthier futures for its customers, but the retailer has further refined that value statement to shine a light on three distinct pillars that it intends to focus on as it grows the business: quality, experience and community.
Quality
Fresh Thyme, which was founded in 2014 in Downers Grove, Illinois, and operates 70 stores, has been on a journey to evolve its value proposition after the pandemic years. Progressive Grocer met with senior leaders Zolcak, Scott Caro, group VP of merchandising and marketing, and others to understand the company’s vision for growth in the coming years.
“We're celebrating our 10th year this year, and as part of that, we did a lot of work recently to understand the journey that we've been on as a brand: how we've connected with our team members, our customers, how the industry's evolved, how the pandemic impacted the industry, to really assess where are we going moving forward and how we are differentiating ourselves,” Zolcak said. “And the result of that work was really our customer value proposition and what we stand for. And that is our brand pillars around quality, experience and community.”
When Zolcak talks about quality, it's about more than just having fresh or premium products —though they excel in both. It’s also about innovation.
“It’s really having a curated assortment that reflects the customer and the markets we're in,” Zolcak said. “Making sure that we've done the work for our customers to ensure that everything that we have in our store stands for quality with clean ingredients. Or really great local products with stories behind them.”
The company works with local suppliers not just at getting them on the shelf; they actually mentor them as well.
“We help them deal with distributors and negotiate the supply chain and how to work with other retailers as well,” said Jonathan Lawrence, VP of center store at Fresh Thyme Market. “And so, we all kind of work together to launch a program and bring them along.”
Fresh Thyme’s assortments are curated to the local community and don’t just include natural products. The customer can find a natural product on the shelf, right next to the conventional item. So for example, a better-for-you box of graham crackers next to the conventional brand product.
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“The whole goal of that is to be accessible. We want to connect with customers and meet them where they're at on their food journey,” Lawrence said.
Another way that Fresh Thyme showcases quality is through limited-time offerings such as Lori Anne Peaches, which were on display at the front of the store on a recent July afternoon, showcasing the fresh, vibrant, seasonal produce that defines Fresh Thyme's approach.
“It's part of what we stand for, but it's really about having that surprise and delight experience for our consumers and being able to engage with those local vendors,” Caro said. “We have an exclusive on Lori Anne peaches in the Midwest; in fact Lori Anne was in our store in Chicago last week sampling peaches.”
Zolcak explained that the company wasn’t sure how many peaches they might sell initially.
“Our stores were a little bullish with their first orders, and we were pulling out of our distribution center like crazy,” Zolcak said. “So we called up Lori Anne, and she got people in the field the next day to pick the peaches for us to have a truck the following day. The impact to the customer and what we stand for and being able to leverage those relationships with our suppliers is just such an interesting space for us to really lean into and really something that we feel that differentiates us.”
Experience
Senior leaders at Fresh Thyme take the word “experience” and blow it out to mean not just having a great customer experience but also having a great employee experience as well.
“When we think about experience, it's really about both the customer and the team member,” Zolcak said. “The team member is actually prioritized ahead of the customer very intentionally because when we have a great team member experience, it leads to a great customer experience. Our customers care about our team members and they care about those relationships and they want that experience with the team members beyond just going and finding great products.”
The company has been investing in career pathing for its 4,000 team members and building a culture of ownership.
“Investing in, developing, and driving career paths with Fresh Thyme is really important to us,” Caro said, adding that the company has done a lot of work, and continues to work, on strengthening its employee value proposition.
“What do we stand for in terms of the employee life cycle, in terms of core foundational principles?” Caro said. “And really making sure that, in the same way that we rolled out the brand identity, that we are really rolling out core beliefs across our business in that space of team member development. We are really leaning into the right tools and resources to take that to the next level.”
Zolcak says the power of collaboration and communication have been key to developing the culture at Fresh Thyme.
"Collaboration and unity are crucial," Zolcak explained. "We've realized the importance of bringing our 4,000 team members together, ensuring they understand and believe in our core values and can effectively communicate them in their own way when interacting with customers."
Zolcak says she wants team members to have more power to make more decisions.
“We want our team to help select and curate products for our customers. We’re empowering them to scout local products and bring those options to us with ideas for bringing it to life in-store.”
The culture at Fresh Thyme is still at work in progress, however.
“As we're continuing to develop our culture, we're almost over-indexing on making sure that we're really communicating the 'why' to our team members and how it relates back to those brand pillars,” Zolcak added. “And how all of our decisions are moving in that direction and bringing them on the journey about where we intend to go in the future. This really has driven a lot of ownership, a stronger sense of accountability, a stronger sense of empowerment with our team, which is really helping to drive better connection with our customers, better results, and gets us really excited about the future.”
When it comes to the customer experience, Fresh Thyme has been thinking more omnichannel especially after the pandemic, trying to balance improving the in-store experience with offering a compelling digital shop.
“How do we improve the bricks-and-mortar environment in tandem with online?” Zolcak said. “How can we be as engaging as we are with our customers in our stores with great samples and great storytelling, and bring that to life in a digital platform?”
At Fresh Thyme stores, shoppers are treated to a full service deli with tons of foodservice and meal solution options. Zolcak calls that “selling time, or T-H-Y-M-E.”
“Within that space, customers are time-starved and looking for convenience,” Zolcak said. “So we have a team that's continually working with partners to bring great quality foods that are convenient in all different forms. Ready to eat, ready to heat, ready to cook.”
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Whatever the need is for the day, the company is continually looking at different solutions to meet shoppers’ needs, always placing the customer at the heart of their strategy.
“We have an amazing service meat and seafood case that offers marinated, fully prepped, and ready to cook entrees from fajitas to stuffed chicken breast to sausage,” Caro said. “We have a lot of entrees and meal solutions and ready to eat meals. We see the opportunity for foodservice to continue to grow.”
Caro said the retailer knows it's important to be seasonally relevant and nimble with recipes and flavors so that “we're moving to meet the customer's needs. So we partner with commissary partners that will provide us with opportunities,” he said.
On the e-commerce front, Fresh Thyme is focused on optimizing its loyalty program and leveraging data.
“We are always wanting to understand our customer and what's important to them and a strong tie to that is our loyalty program and really digging into that to best connect with our customers,” Caro said.
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Fresh Thyme has been using the data to better understand what customers are looking for on the shelf, and Caro explained an example of how the company is pivoting based on what is moving or not moving.
“Our category managers are using those tools to help them bring to life on the shelf what the customers are looking for, and we move really quickly in that space,” Caro said. “We're always measuring and trying to understand the needs and also what's important to the customer.”
Fresh Thyme says shoppers are more focused on value now, and that has been a priority when it comes to pricing and promotions.
“We are making sure that we're optimizing the promotions and really leveraging what matters the most to customers,” Caro said. “So the items that we're selecting at what price point, and really making sure that the value is driven in a way that is really meaningful.”
“It's the items that our customers care about, the healthy and the better for you,” Caro said. “We know everyone is price conscious, so really making sure that even as we're thinking about delivering that to our customer, it's through our value proposition and how we speak to quality, experience, and community and what we're offering, the work that we've done to curate that value offer for them.”
Community
Fresh Thyme looks at community engagement in a whole new way, beyond connecting with customers and investing in local communities.
“We want the communities where we operate to see themselves reflected in the team members of their stores,” Zolcak said. “We want them to see themselves reflected in the products that we sell, in the signage in the store, how we merchandise, and the assortment that we carry. And we are really excited about how the team's doubling down on how we continue to lean into these things as we move forward.”
Zolcak says community defines each of the stores, and the company gives store teams the opportunity to bring the community to life in their stores.
“We plan events throughout the year and provide a skeleton or a shell for them and then we ask the store teams to bring it to life with their own personality, their own thoughts and ideas as they build it out,” Zolcak said. “Those efforts connect to the local community, which is important for us.”
Zolcak says the retailer is continually exploring new ways to engage with team members, including “offering frequent discounts or free products on new or innovative items. This approach helps ensure that our team stays updated on the latest trends and developments. By doing so, we can better engage with and educate our customers. It's been a fun space for us to leverage.”
