{"id":15997,"date":"2016-04-19T13:53:14","date_gmt":"2016-04-19T18:53:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/?p=15997"},"modified":"2016-04-19T13:53:14","modified_gmt":"2016-04-19T18:53:14","slug":"fresh-thyme-market-review-grocery-chain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/?p=15997","title":{"rendered":"Fresh Thyme Market Review &#8211; Grocery Chain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/CL67330LOGO-b.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-16000\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-16000\" src=\"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/CL67330LOGO-b-300x120.jpg\" alt=\"Fresh Thyme Farmers Markets Review\" width=\"205\" height=\"82\" \/><\/a>&#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/freshthyme.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Fresh Thyme Farmers Market<\/a>&#8221; is a relatively new chain of grocery stores in the Upper Midwest. \u00a0I&#8217;ve heard it described as &#8220;Trader Joe&#8217;s meets Whole Foods.&#8221; \u00a0I guess that means the focus is on &#8220;natural&#8221; and &#8220;organic&#8221; mixed with some interesting items (imports) like Trader Joe&#8217;s stocks.<\/p>\n<p>The chain is the brainstorm of the\u00a0former CEO of \u00a0Phoenix based <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sunflower_Farmers_Market\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sunflower Farmers Markets<\/a>, which was founded by the originator of the Wild Oats chain, which was sold to Whole Foods. \u00a0The start-up is being financed by the giant <a href=\"https:\/\/www.meijer.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Meijer grocery<\/a>, out of Michigan, and has a goal of having 60 stores by 2020.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Fresh Thyme Farmers Market (not sure what happened to the apostrophe) stores are larger than Trader Joe&#8217;s, but smaller than most Whole Foods. They have a very large selection of fresh produce, and the one I was in had a hot foods counter (pizza, sandwiches) and a deli counter. This location the deli meats were exclusively from Boar&#8217;s Head, which is a respectable company, but in my own personal opinion, not the best in the segment.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">To me, the store appears to have better value pricing than either TJs or WFs, and the day I was in, weekly specials included a pound of Thai (pond raised) shrimp for $3.79, and house made sausages in many flavors at $2.99.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I go to these kind of specialty stores for a few reasons: \u00a0looking for unknown (to me) ingredients to try out, house-made specialties, and unusual imports. \u00a0So I bought the shrimp, sausage, some produce, and a frozen pizza imported from Italy, which I hope is as good as the i<a href=\"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/2012\/01\/home-cookin-trader-joes-pizza-margherita\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">mported pizzas at Trader Joe&#8217;s<\/a>. \u00a0I&#8217;ll let you know. \u00a0My opinion, the frozen pizzas at TJs from Italy and France are far superior to almost all American brands.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The stores are immaculate, open early and late, and the personnel are courteous and informed. \u00a0I&#8217;ll stop back from time to time, for sure.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/freshthyme.com\/our-stores\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Store locator<\/a>. \u00a0(Photos from the company&#8217;s website and copyright their respective owners).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Fresh-Thyme-Farmers-Markets.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-16001\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-16001\" src=\"http:\/\/burgersdogspizza.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Fresh-Thyme-Farmers-Markets-400x267.jpg\" alt=\"Fresh Thyme Farmers Markets Review\" width=\"400\" height=\"267\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Fresh Thyme Market Review<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Fresh Thyme Farmers Market&#8221; is a relatively new chain of grocery stores in the Upper Midwest. \u00a0I&#8217;ve heard it described as &#8220;Trader Joe&#8217;s meets Whole Foods.&#8221; \u00a0I guess that means the focus is on &#8220;natural&#8221; and &#8220;organic&#8221; mixed with some interesting items (imports) like Trader Joe&#8217;s stocks. The chain is the brainstorm of the\u00a0former CEO&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/?p=15997\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Fresh Thyme Market Review &#8211; Grocery Chain<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,13,16,26],"tags":[123,2548],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15997"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15997\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.peterstromquist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}