Fresh Thyme Market

0:00Celena Ruiz:Welcome to the Emerging Brands Podcast with Kelly Bennett. This is the podcast to discover stories behind your new favorite CPG brands. Each episode brings you behind the scenes of the brand and founder story, learn what sets them apart in the marketplace, and their strategy going to market. We talk about plans for growth, practical advice for an emerging brand founder, and where to shop products that are making waves in food, beverage, wellness, beauty, and beyond. You'll also hear from industry experts, brand builders, investors, and operators you should absolutely have on your radar if you're building a CPG brand today.

0:44Celena Ruiz:I'm your host, Kelly Bennett, a Brooklyn-based brand strategist with a front row seat of what makes an emerging CPG brand stand out. Whether you're building a brand of your own or love supporting what's next, you're in the right place. This episode was made possible by our sponsor, Hummingbirds. Hummingbirds is a platform that connects everyday small creators with brands that drive user-generated content, build buzz at specific retailers, and captures competitive market share. It's a tool that I recommend to all of my clients that you should absolutely check out. Head to hummingbirds.com for all the details.

1:27Celena Ruiz:Now let's dive into the new episode. Hi everyone. Welcome back to a new episode of Emerging Brands Podcast with Kelly Bennett. Today I have a really special guest. This is a conversation we haven't had yet on the podcast. And when Selena Ruiz said yes to coming on, I really nerded out because she is the category manager of poultry, seafood, and value add at Fresh Time Market. And Selena, I'm so happy to have you on the podcast. Me too. Thank you so much for having me. You're welcome. I first want to jump into what is Fresh Time Market. There's so many different retailers out there, but to me, Fresh Time really stands out as a really cool marketplace that I see many emerging brands pop up at.

2:18Celena Ruiz:So I would love if you could just give us an overview of what makes this particular grocery store different. Yeah. Fresh time markets values are quality, experience, and community. Those are the three things that we strive to do in pretty much everything from customer experience to the merchandising. So what that means is we have fresh, healthy, quality groceries available. and we also try to meet customers where they're at whether it's they're trying to start to eat healthier or maybe they have been but they're just kind of want to try something new because we to your point earlier we do offer a lot of emerging brand options in the stores and we cater that all into the experience of the store with our smaller formats similar to smaller natural chains.

3:11We have about 70 stores across the Midwest. We're across 10 states, 70 stores, smaller footprint, but still that kind of focus on the customer experience with it being so small. That's incredible. Yeah. Yeah. And one of our last pillars is community. So we do a lot of local too. We have a very strong local program. And what's unique about Fresh Times local program is that it's by state versus something that retailers don't really, they either do it on like a mass kind of distribution level. But we give a lot of autonomy to the specific stores to kind of pick and choose what their local programs look like.

3:56So Fresh Time as a whole is just kind of like your local health foods market that wants to meet you where you're at on your health journey and your affordability level. And hopefully you can come in and get some fresh produce and try something new while you're there.

4:09Celena Ruiz:I love that the company gives autonomy to those local areas and by state because every community looks different. And the fact that customers feel seen by their grocery store, it's such an intimate space. It feels like, okay, everyone needs to go to a grocery store at some point. But when you have a space that you feel seen and comfortable and community driven, it really makes it feel more connected because it's the food that you're putting in your body, feeding your family. That little extra touch really does go a long way. Yeah. It's all the benefits of a larger grocery chain, but with the feel of like your local corner store.

4:51Celena Ruiz:So cool. So when we talked about just briefly of your position as category manager, poultry, seafood, and value add, before we hit record, I even asked what exactly is value add? Could you go through that first? Because I thought that was really interesting how you put the pieces together. Yeah. So value add really means anything that adds value to an ancillary cut in the meat and seafood department. So that traditionally is just marinated, breaded, maybe like a kebab or different formats of the proteins themselves. And almost always it's behind like a service case. Got it. So is it similar to food service?

5:36Very similar. Okay. Kind of like meal solutions in the same realm, but it's not cooked. So it's ready to cook versus ready to heat.

5:46Celena Ruiz:Got it. Okay, cool. Thank you for nerding out with me on those little niches. I love it. I would love to hear your career background. How did you get into grocery category manager? Sure, yeah. It's something I definitely didn't plan on when I was in college. or in high school for that matter. I definitely fell into it. COVID pushed me in that direction. I was in grad school and I just finished my master's in creative writing from the Art Institute of Chicago. And I thought I was going to be a writer, but I graduated two months after COVID started and that just wasn't, I had to find a job. So I had been working for a small fresh kitchen concept here in Chicago.

6:34It's called Protein Bar and Kitchen. It's very similar to Sweetgreen. Okay. Protein shakes, like a very heavy focus on protein. So they had shakes and smoothies and breakfast bowls and all sorts of things. But I'd worked there for seven years, like supporting myself through college. So I, when that closed, I ended up working at Jewel Osco, So I started as a stalker on the OSCO side, and I was very eager to do more and get a full-time position. So I worked my way up to a front-end manager role. And then when I wanted to take that next step to be a store manager, Dom's Kitchen and Market, which was a...

7:21They're no longer in business, but they were in Chicago. we had a couple of locations they were opening and they needed an e-commerce manager at the time when I was a front-end manager jewel was just getting their e-commerce program off the ground Albertson's was and oh okay all that money was going into it and drive up and go was starting off and there was so much training and a learning curve and I took all those learnings and brought them to this new startup concept grocery store Dom's Kitchen and Market and there I basically built the e-commerce program for them, which was very rewarding and a lot of fun.

7:57I was basically a merchandiser for e-commerce and I managed - What did that look like to merchandise e-commerce? Well, when there's nothing to go off of, you just get to create whatever you want. So it was very flex in that you're just looking at what everybody else is doing with their e-commerce platforms and trying to figure out what works best for the retailer that I was with. And with Doms, they were a grocery store and a kitchen. And at the time there, that concept hadn't existed online. It was either, or you couldn't get, you couldn't order a pizza and some sandwiches and like a smoothie and a coffee with your groceries.

8:40Like that just wasn't, I don't even think that really is a thing right now, unless you went to Air One. Yeah.

8:45Celena Ruiz:Or maybe I don't even think Whole Foods, lets you do that. Yeah. I'm sure someone listening will know the answer to this. You're right. I really haven't. I mean, aside from maybe Fresh Direct has some prepared foods, but not necessarily like a pizza, I don't think. Like hot and ready to go. Right. Okay. Now I'm going to nerd out and like look this up. But so that was that what you were focusing on there? Trying to figure out how to put that together so we could be successful and that did it worked very well and um we were growing and we needed more category managers and since e-commerce is pretty a stagnant type of work once it's up and running it's just maintaining um i was offered a fresh category manager position but i oversaw meat seafood cheese and charcuterie uh which is what we called it which uh for everybody else is probably specialty cheese and deli okay so I did all four um before we ended up going out of business and then fresh time picked me up and I've been doing poultry and seafood with value add for the last year actually maybe a year and a couple weeks okay well congratulations on your first year and what an interesting career shift from writing yeah here what do you think are some of those through lines that caught your interest in this space?

10:13Oh, for sure. Creativity, for one. Okay. There's a lot of both left and right side brain attributes to both. Very analytical, good articulating myself, which kind of translates into data and analysis, but also being creative and coming up with ideas and new flavor profiles and merchandising strategies, kind of taking the strengths and applying them to the concepts of the role.

10:41Celena Ruiz:Super interesting. And I would love to hear next around how you approach the category and what you have on your radar to make Fresh Times poultry, seafood value add a little bit different or unique or, you know, something that really stands out to a consumer to make them want to come back again and again. I just would love to hear your point of view. Yeah. I tell people all the time, it's like meat and seafood. There's not any new animals coming out. You know, there's not any new proteins being made. What we have is what we have. So where you get to be creative is really with the value add. So the strategy around value add is how can we elevate these flavor profiles and stay on trend while also presenting them in a very approachable way.

11:37So merchandising is very important and so is the marketing piece. We've noticed our customer demographic is shifting away from millennials to, you know, Gen Z and just smaller households also in general. right and yeah that there's so much going on I'm literally in the middle of a uh a review for the value program we're launching a whole new spice program next year which is super exciting incredible yeah I'm very very excited to get that off the ground but yeah with value add and the trends in poultry and seafood it's honestly about the household size so portions are really big right now especially with like seafood portions you mean the seafoods are getting smaller okay so traditionally or before I should say you would just have a case full of fillets so like a full side of a fish um and then you could order by the pound or you could say I want this much and they would cut you however much of the filet you wanted.

12:50But because we're noticing smaller households and faster cook times are just a necessity. That makes sense. Just portions. So like five, six, maybe even seven ounce portions, pre-portioned out so you can just take it home, do whatever you need to do with it, not have to worry about anything. That's really big in seafood at least. And that's definitely the trend for there.

13:14Celena Ruiz:Do you see an uptick in your category with people being more aware of their protein intake, especially in women's health? That's a good question. I wish I had customer data to look at that, but I know that that shift is a lot more prevalent in grocery. And that's just overall with protein being put in everything. Right. Right. But we with Fresh Time, you'll see in our ads, we do focus a lot on protein. So on our ads, you'll see produce and meat at the top of ads every week. So we notice, especially with poultry, like white meat and seafood specifically and grass fed beef. Those are definitely going to be our top protein options that customers gravitate towards.

14:04Celena Ruiz:Do you see that as an uptick or was that something that Fresh Time always brought to the front of the ads or just to the front of the conversation for consumers? It's probably a bit of both. Okay. With our pillars of like quality being one of them, we only want to promote the products that are going to be better for you and offer great benefits. um so yes we will put them on top of the ad because they perform well but also like customers are looking for that too they want grass-fed beef they don't really want just a regular natural option and similarly with chicken you know we just brought in an air chilled line which we hadn't had um air chilled organic chicken we just brought that in because of all What is air chilled?

15:00Well, there's water chilled and air chilled chicken.

15:03Celena Ruiz:Okay. And it just depends on preference. But water chilled means that after it's done being processed and they need to bring the meat down to temp, they will dip it in a very, very cold water. And it's treated so that way there's no bacteria or anything. And that's how they bring it down to temp. whereas air chilled they processing the meat is left kind of hanging almost but it goes into an air chill room a room that is to temperature that they want the chicken to come out as at and that's how it's brought to temperature so it's not treated with anything it's just in space in this room being brought down to temp and depending on who you ask there's pros and cons to both.

15:48Air chilled, there's less water in the final product. It's not treated with any sort of chemicals. And the misconception is that it's dry, but it's the opposite because it's not, once you cook it off, that excess water isn't bleeding out. Water chilled, however, tends to be a little bit more affordable and just creates like a better looking product at the end of the process. So both are great options, but we've noticed air chilled is becoming a lot more popular. You notice like whole foods only carries air chilled and, um, got it.

16:26Celena Ruiz:So are consumers asking for that in particular, or they're just asking for the next innovation of, you know, a better for you protein? It's a bit of both. Well, now that air chilled has become very popular. It's hard to go to a store, a retailer where they don't have a line that's air chilled. Okay. Organic. They have to, they have at least one line, but also we've had customers come in wondering like, where's the air chilled? Because of the misconceptions that, you know, the chemicals and water chilled can be left into the meat at the end of the processing. And they want the natural. Right. Everybody's looking for.

17:06Celena Ruiz:I'm now going to look, I personally just recently became pescatarian. I was vegan for a really, really long time. So even eating seafood is still a whole new world to me. So even air chilled chicken, I'm like, what? I've never, I've never heard of this before. But now I will definitely look out for it. Is there any other innovations, trends? Obviously, we know protein got really popular. Jerkies have definitely been on the radar. I was just at fancy food and I had a salmon jerky, which was really interesting. Any other trends that you see in your category that's catching your eye? Jerky. I mean, there's the head to tail concept that a lot of farmers are utilizing, to your point about jerky.

17:55So they'll take all that excess protein and muscle that's left after the processing and they will use it. to create jerky. It's like a great value add option. It creates more income for them and it's low margin or high margin. So it's great for profit boosting. And that's what you're seeing with tallow too. So tallow is already there. Jerky, the products for jerky is already there, but now that it's trending, this head to tail philosophy of utilizing the whole animal, so there's no waste is taking advantage of that. So you're seeing a lot more UPC products coming from meat producers and farmers than you traditionally would.

18:35Like when we were at the meat show earlier this year, you know, there's options for steaks everywhere and wagyu and all these different options. And then you see right in the corner, like their set of UPC products, which is new, honestly. What is UPC?

18:54Celena Ruiz:So it's the, like a barcode, things with like a barcode on got it got it got it okay yeah so most almost everything is catch weight so it's weighed at the store or weighed in a processing plant and sold that way but when it comes to like individual upc items that's traditionally a center store type of option it's not really something that you find in fresh meat obviously in deli but not in meat and seafood so that is definitely a trend of just more products coming from the whole animal philosophy coming out so we'll see how that takes off obviously tallow did which is right and that category is growing um but flavor profiles especially that is growing when we were at the seafood show it seemed like there was new ways of eating seafood from shrimp burgers to um different types of fish as poke bowls so obviously that would be tuna and salmon but what would that look like with white fish so that was new just different ways of eating fish um that's more approachable to a consumer because not everybody knows how to eat it or let alone cook it so i feel like i i'm back to like being a young teenager trying to figure out how to cook because i hadn't eaten yeah any poultry i mean seafood in like almost 20 years so going back to it now i'm like okay what do i do and And everything's a bit different.

20:23You don't want to mess it up either. I don't want to mess it up.

20:25Celena Ruiz:Exactly. And so I like that you're saying that it's becoming more approachable and just variety. And so I'm just not just eating salmon every single day, right? Right. It's pushing. Pushing the palate a bit. Yeah. And the brands and suppliers to make more approachable options, which is reinventing the category. Like the frozen seafood category, there are way more options than there ever used to be, which is really great because it used to be really hard like a few years ago just to find new items for Frozen. Interesting. As far as emerging brands, do you feel like people are brand loyal in this category in particular?

21:06Celena Ruiz:Because versus say like pantry, right? Like you have your different brands that you like for your condiments or for your toppings, right? But poultry and seafood could be you maybe aren't as aware of the brand yeah how do you integrate say emerging brands in your category in particular oh it's it's way more attribute driven so okay or to your point like with frozen shrimp for example um that we have a generic sale brand of frozen shrimp that we carry and it sells well and everybody loves it but if we were to bring in a different brand and it was the same price and same attributes, nobody would blink an eye.

21:51So with emerging brands, we rely on local mostly. So you will see a lot of stuff with us being in the Midwest. It's with seafood specifically, we have a leg up there because of the Great Lakes and a lot of our customers are loyal to fresh fish. So we'll see salmon jerky and smoked fish from local smoke houses, small smoke houses from up north, maybe northern Michigan and Minnesota. So we'll try to incorporate those brands. And then obviously looking for new products, like we were just talking about for Frozen. What's tough about that is there's only so much space in Frozen. For us specifically, the meat and seafood Frozen is within the department.

22:39For other retailers, it will be built into the frozen department. So when it comes to like appetizers or snack options, it just depends on which category that falls into. But the innovation, I guess, process that the industry is kind of going through right now with the shift into smaller portions and ready to eat, we're kind of in the middle of it. So it's very exciting to see what's coming out.

23:10Celena Ruiz:And you touched upon spices also. What is the next iteration on spices there? Spices. It's more about, it's like themes. So we're working out and building out our 2026 program and doing quarterly themes with flavor profiles. So like this past year, like food truck was like such a thing. Pickles were huge. Yes. Asian inspired flavors were, are continue to trend, honestly. Right. Um, so how can you build like a fun marketing theme around that and then going back and developing flavors and trying new things and testing R &D with our spice supplier. So that's kind of the way we go about it. Just to build a program around a theme is kind of how we're going to do it.

24:07Celena Ruiz:I'm really excited to see it roll out because I love a theme. I love spices. I personally have been getting more into spices. I've been trying a new line of Pakistani spices and lots of Indian spices, fancy food, and just exploring my palate into things that maybe I haven't tried yet. And I think it's a great way to make cooking and different proteins just interesting and feel a bit different and exposing yourself to different cultures through spices. So it's just a personal thing I'm into as well in my cooking. yeah same very cool as far as an emerging brand approaching you as a category manager or just pitches that I'm sure that you hear or see at work would you what advice would you share with someone who has maybe a new spice line I'm thinking because we were talking about spices or you know another value add that could be within your category what piece of advice would you share with a founder who is reaching out and saying like, hey, I think my product would do really well at your store.

25:16Celena Ruiz:What would you say to them? I would want to know what their growth strategy look like. Typically with emerging brands, they are just trying to get, they just want to pique your interest, right? But when you're working with so many stores, you kind of have to think, okay well how do we get this everywhere is it something that we can do everywhere or is this more local so when it comes to emerging brands we often start with local first and we have a great local manager Rebecca who does amazing work trying to corral all these brands and getting them into the stores and the visibility that they need so oftentimes we start there and we'll see how they do with maybe five stores given the region that it's in or the state that it's in um and if it does really well and they're on pace to take on like a full fleet of stores then yeah we'll definitely look at what that looks like for everybody for all the stores but usually we start off small, a lot of them can't take on the distribution too, which is a big, I wouldn't say issue, but it definitely hinders some of the growth possibilities with emerging brands.

26:39So if you're not ready and you don't have a good distributor or supplier relationship in place, it'll definitely slow you down.

26:48Celena Ruiz:That's such a great point and something that I hear from emerging brands all the time of trying to figure out that next stage of growth because you need more doors in order to grow but if you don't have the back end organized you can't even fulfill the orders if you get it right so just that's a good point as far as having clarity of what is the strategy for your brand before you even approach a store or want to grow in stores because everyone wants to grow, but what are you doing actually behind the scenes in order to make that happen and make it possible? Absolutely. For meat and seafood specifically, I know Center Store does their marketing and merchandising plans differently than the fresh side does.

27:34So for us, we really focus on storytelling. So when we have a new brand come in and they're getting off the ground and they're trying to get visibility and they want to start with our store is our first one of the first things we talk about is okay what's your expansion plan like we just talked about but then also what is your marketing budget how how much can you afford to tell this story to our customers um and that looks like emails and we do these awesome cooking classes where we have our um dietician pick products and put together a meal and she goes online on Facebook and that's great visibility there, but like all these things cost things.