Retail / Food retail
Fresh Thyme Market: Planning in-store fresh-food production around demand and shelf life
- Company
- Fresh Thyme Market
- Country
- United States
- Adoption stage
- In operation
- Source published
- Date basis
- The date the source was published. It can differ from the date adoption started.
- How the source was checked
- Read the full source text
The work problem
Fresh Thyme Market stores printed their own paper production sheets to manage fresh-food preparation. The support office had limited visibility into what each department made and often identified improvement opportunities only after reports arrived. The challenge was to prepare the right quantities at the right times while considering ingredient and finished-product shelf life, display sizes and shopper demand by time of day.
Technology and data
The company replaced paper plans with Afresh AI production planning. The AI sets daily item-level plans using ingredient and prepared-food shelf life, demand, display size and shopper traffic timing. In deli it guides how many chickens to roast and when, including the lunch rush. In meat it links cuts to available subprimals. In bakery it schedules thawing and proofing that must begin the previous night. Store employees put the plan into practice, while ordering and inventory management are handled through the same Afresh Store Suite.
Results
Afresh reported production-plan adherence increasing from 40% to 90% in Fresh Thyme's deli and a significant rise in sales. It said recommendations that better matched actual prepared-food demand improved efficiency and sales together. Fresh Thyme's retail operations director said the intuitive tool delivered adherence levels paper had not achieved. At publication, the company was expanding production planning from deli into produce, meat and bakery based on deli results.
Limits and open questions
The release does not disclose specific deli or chicken sales growth rates, waste reduction or the sample used to measure adherence. Expansion into other fresh departments is not treated as evidence that those departments had already achieved the same results as deli.
Sources
Compiled from public sources. These are not results from ATF Works customers.