Inside Fresh Thyme: CEO explains retailer's secret to low prices


GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- Take a walk through a Fresh Thyme Farmers Market and you won't find 2-liter bottles of Pepsi or Coke, or bags of Doritos and Ruffles chips.

And it's not just about Fresh Thyme's effort to replicate a traditional farmers market with a plethora of healthy choices from organic produce to locally-harvested raw honey and roasted coffee.

Those popular processed snack foods don't fit with the burgeoning specialty retailer's business model.

"Center store for that world is where most of the competition is," said Fresh Thyme CEO Chris Sherrell. "They are competing to get the cheapest Coke, Pepsi, Ruffles and Doritos. We don't sell those items."

Fresh Thyme doesn't have a center store layout like conventional grocery stores or supercenters.

Half the store's 85,000 square feet is devoted to organic and locally-grown fruits and vegetables. The rest is taken up by a natural meat department, healthy deli foods to go, bakery goods, 400 bulk food bins, dairy and frozen and health supplement products.

Fresh Thyme depends on produce and meat to drive the bulk of sales.

"With the size of our produce department, we are able to sell produce cheaper," said Sherrell. "That's just the model itself rather than me being a genius."

That doesn't mean there aren't exceptions. Fresh Thyme sells some national products. including some Campbell soups and even 20-ounce bottles of Coke and Sprite because customers have requested them, says Simon Cutts, Fresh Thyme's director of grocery.

But those Coca-Cola products are on the bottom shelf. Prime eye-level space is given to natural soda brands Jones, Joia Life, Izze and the Michigan-based LaCroix.

"I tell people we aren't trying to sell designer food to rich people," said Cutts. "We are trying to give normal folks better options."

Today, Fresh Thyme will open its fifth store in Michigan, and 32nd location chain-wide.

The burgeoning retailer is on track to eventually have 150 stores across the Midwest, from Iowa to Indiana.

The Grand Rapids store, at 2470 Burton St. in the new Breton Village, is the closest the retailer has come to the headquarters of Meijer Inc., a competitor and its major investor.

Meijer co-CEO Mark Murray is on Fresh Thyme's board of directors, according to the supercenter chain.

Sherrell thinks Meijer and Fresh Thyme can co-exist, but he expects Fresh Thyme to pull shoppers from other retailers.

"Fresh Thyme is having some great success," said Sherrell, adding that from an investor standpoint, Meijer is "happy and pleased."

Despite the counsel from Murray and potentially other Meijer leaders on Fresh Thyme's board of directors, both retailers operate "100 percent" separate of each other.

Although they were invited, Meijer leaders didn't attend a Tuesday afternoon ribbon cutting ceremony for the new store.

Afterward, families of the store's 100 full-time and part-time employees were invited to get a sneak peek of the store before its 7 a.m. Wednesday, Feb. 24, opening.

Store hours are 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.

Shandra Martinez covers business and other topics for MLive. Email her or follow her on Twitter @shandramartinez.

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