The Fresh Market to Spotlight Women-Owned Brands
Specialty grocer The Fresh Market will turn the spotlight on women-owned and -operated food companies throughout the month of March in honor of Women’s History Month. To mark the occasion, 100-plus products from women-owned companies will be called out throughout the store with signage, as well as via social media. As an added treat, on March 8, International Women’s Day, the retailer will offer free cupcakes to female customers.
This is the second consecutive year that The Fresh Market is promoting women suppliers. In 2020, the retailer featured Bisousweet Confections, Live Love Pop, Me & The Bees Lemonade, Bixby & Co and Callie’s Biscuits.
The retailer also currently carries such items as Shelby Charter Township, Michigan-based Ethel’s Baking Co., which makes gluten-free dessert bars and cookies; McAdoo, Pennsylvania-based van Hoekelen Greenhouses Inc., a family-run business that grows most of the spring potted bulb plants found at The Fresh Market, including tulips, hyacinths, daffodils, spring cactus, Asiatic lilies and Easter lilies; Normal, Illinois-based The Cookie Dough Café, which offers gourmet edible cookie dough; Jersey City, New Jersey-based Partake, a Black-owned company offering gluten-free, vegan and allergy-friendly cookies and baking mixes; Dallas-based Hail Merry, a line of refrigerated plant-based raw-food snacks that come in cups, bites and tarts in such flavors as Chocolate Peanut Butter or Key Lime, and are non-GMO, gluten-, grain- and dairy-free, vegan and paleo-friendly; and Columbus, Ohio-based Jeni’s Ice Cream, a Certified B Corporation that offers artisan ice creams made with whole ingredients and dairy from grass-pastured cows, coupled with inspired flavors that help spark the artisan ice cream movement.
“We are committed to offering the best of specialty foods at The Fresh Market, and it is really exciting to see the growth of products that are developed, launched and run by women,” noted Maren Trocki, The Fresh Market’s director of dairy and frozen merchandising. “All of these products were created out of their personal passions and missions, and it shows in meeting a unique need like clean ingredients or gluten-free, as well as delivering on taste.”
Based in Greensboro, North Carolina, The Fresh Market operates 159 stores in 22 states. The company is No. 71 on Progressive Grocer’s 2020 PG 100 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America.
