In Their Words: Fresh Thyme's Scott Schuette

Scott Schuette is vice president of produce at Fresh Thyme Market, a natural foods retailer headquartered in Downers Grove, Illinois. Fresh Thyme opened its first store six years ago and has since grown to 73 locations spanning 11 states. OPN recently caught up with Scott to talk about about Fresh Thyme’s organic produce program, organic produce trends, and more.

How did you get started working in the produce industry?

My passion for produce started in the backyard of my parents’ hobby farm in Arizona. We grew all kinds of good stuff throughout the year—everything from carrots, radishes, and corn to oranges, lemons, and pomegranates. So I was involved in agriculture at a very early age.

When I turned 15, my Dad gave me the old family farm truck, and the deal was I had to go out and get a job to pay for insurance and gas. So I started my first job as a produce clerk at Bashas’, a family-owned and operated retailer out in Arizona.

While attending college, I continued my job in retail produce even though my major was visual communications and graphic design. It wasn’t until my senior year that I realized my passion for produce was greater than my desire to create company identity branding and business logos. So I ended up not going into the graphic design business, and I worked my way up through the ranks in the retail produce industry to where I am today as VP for Fresh Thyme’s produce and floral division.

Scott Schuette, vice president of produce, Fresh Thyme Market

What percentage of Fresh Thyme’s produce is organic, and why is it important for your company to carry organic produce?

Roughly 30 percent of what we sell in the produce department is from our certified organic program, and we carry an average of 200 different organic fruit and vegetables items.

Carrying organic is critical to Fresh Thyme—it’s our mission to bring natural and organic foods to customers in the Midwest. In order to provide the healthiest available products, organic must be the center of the bullseye for us.

What are Fresh Thyme’s sourcing standards and methods for its organic produce? 

When it comes to sourcing from our suppliers, we have three steps that we focus on. The first step is always the highest level of quality. Quality standards are top on the list and always will be!

Next, we focus on the best service levels. Because we’re in the Midwest, opportunities for the best service are important for us because a lot of our product is a West Coast product, and it does take a number of days of transit for it to get here.

And then last on our list is making sure that we have the most favorable cost for the product. Cost is important to us because it’s what helps drive our lowest possible retails, and it really helps us fuel our promotional strategy, especially when it comes to organic.

In terms of our supplier partnerships, we’re a little different than a lot of other organic-focused retailers. We’re looking for partnerships that allow us to do what we do best—sell real food at real affordable prices. So that translates into supplier partnerships that are focused more on moving large tonnage versus selling those smaller volumes at excessive high margins. We’re focused on organic turns and the shrink performance—that fast nickel approach rather than waiting for the slow dime.

Scott Schuette, vice president of produce, Fresh Thyme Market

Does Fresh Thyme have its own distribution center?

We do! We opened our distribution center almost three years ago in Bolingbrook, Illinois. If you look at a map, you’ll see that Bolingbrook is almost in the center of where our stores are located, so we have a pretty nice little distribution outreach to all of our stores.

We also have some hyper-local programs that involve direct-store-delivery (DSD) providers. Those are farms in each of the 11 states that help out with some of those hard-to-find specific local items that are better suited to go direct from the farm to the store rather than all the way back to our distribution center and then out to the stores again. This time of year is big for DSD programs because it’s the local growing season here in the Midwest.

Who are some of your major grower partners, both on the West Coast and more locally?

Braga Farms is very high on our list. We buy a packaged organic salad program as well as organic commodities from them. It’s been a great partnership. Grimmway Farms (also known as Cal-Organics) is another big direct organic farm partnership that we have.

We have some major partnerships with local organic growers that grow via greenhouse to extend their growing season. Superior Fresh is an organic salad company that produces packaged salads for us year-round. We also have a partnership with Meyer Farms, an organic local herb company that does both greenhouse growing and field crops. They were one of the partners that we were introduced to before our distribution center was open. They’ve become our herb grower of choice—they’ve got all kinds of very intricate biodynamic growing practices that they follow, and they do a really nice job for us.

Fresh Thyme produce department

Do you work with any wholesale distributors?

Right now, about 90 percent of our sourcing is direct from farms. When it comes to anything in that remaining 10 percent, we have a couple folks that we primarily utilize—Anthony Marano and Heartland Produce. They assist us with fills and shorts, those last minute emergencies.

What kinds of trends have you noticed in organic produce over the course of your career?

This question puts a smile on my face because I have seen the organic trend come and go many times throughout my 36 years in the retail produce industry, but I can safely say that in the last 10 years, organic produce has managed to find a permanent spot in the vast variety of fruits and vegetables out there. It is definitely here to stay now, and I see nothing but exponential growth happening in the organic category moving forward.

Fresh Thyme Market

Are there any organic items that stand out to you as being particularly popular?

Absolutely! In fact, we have a number of organic items that are as popular or more popular than their conventional counterparts. Right now, as far as the packaged salad category goes, at least 70 percent of our business is organic (and we’ve seen 58-percent sales growth during the COVID timeframe!). Carrots are the same. In fact, we sold so much more in organic carrots that we eventually opted to no longer carry conventional carrots. So every carrot that we carry is now organic.  

"I can safely say that in the last 10 years, organic produce has managed to find a permanent spot in the vast variety of fruits and vegetables out there. It is definitely here to stay now, and I see nothing but exponential growth happening in the organic category moving forward." -Scott Schuette 

What about organic berries—are those also a popular item at Fresh Thyme?

Organic berries, grapes, bananas, apples, avocados, mushrooms—those items along with packaged salads and carrots are our top organic performers year-round and make up about 60 percent of our total organic sales.

Scott Schuette, vice president of produce, Fresh Thyme Market

Can you talk a bit about your company’s marketing and consumer education efforts related to organic produce (both in-store and online)?  

We found out that trying to promote and engage the customer in organic items was difficult early on because we honestly just didn’t do a good job broadcasting and advertising what items in the department were organic. And we realized we needed to do more than just post a sign on an item that says these particular beets are organic. We’re still doing that, but we’re using different types of signs for each of the organic items.

We’re also giving the store fixtures (the display cases, the wooden tables) a brighter, fun, flashy look—something that catches the customers’ eye. When they walk in, there’s no doubt they know where the organic section is at Fresh Thyme.

Fresh Thyme citrus display

We’ve also done quite a bit of work on our print ads and all of our digital assets that involve anything with organic produce. Week in and week out, we make it a point that the organic category is featured as a primary focus above the fold. We want to make sure that organic is top of mind for the consumer.

"Week in and week out, we make it a point that the organic category is featured as a primary focus above the fold. We want to make sure that organic is top of mind for the consumer." -Scott Schuette

How does Fresh Thyme stay competitive with the many other retailers that offer organic produce?

We’ve got three things that we really focus on to make organic successful in competing with our competitors. Our assortment is very consistent, and it’s constantly growing—we’ve never once taken a step backwards in organic. We’ve continued to build the organic program month after month, year after year.

Second on that list would be how aggressive we are with our weekly organic promotions. We pride ourselves on making organic available to the masses. We do a really nice job with promoting organic items that give any customer (whether they’re an organic customer or a conventional customer) the opportunity to strongly consider buying organic. Right now, for example, we have a buy one get one free on the Josie’s organic salads, which is a great value!

And last but not least, the third thing would be the dedicated space in merchandising that we give the organic program. This helps us compete against a lot of the mainstream conventional operators that have very limited merchandising space for organics. In addition to our designated organic wet rack and our designated organic table, we’ve done all kinds of organic satellite displays throughout the store.