The problem: Guesswork passing as process

In late 2024, John Hock, Fresh Thyme’s VP of Operations, asked his team to evaluate what they called the five leaky buckets of shrink. Department by department, his team examined every process.

“Production was one of our highest shrink drivers. I asked my team to evaluate what processes existed, or didn’t, and how mature they were. In some cases it was a pen and paper production planner. In others, there was nothing at all.”

— Jon Hock, VP of Operations

Production emerged as one of the company’s two largest shrink drivers. At the time, it ran almost entirely on pen and paper: Each store looked up last week’s sales, set its own pars, and worked from those numbers for the next few days.

These worksheets could only show last week’s sales. Their numbers couldn’t account for the new promotion starting on Monday, the upcoming holiday, or the weather about to shift. Built on numbers that couldn’t account for store context, and on team knowledge that varied by shift, production plans were always a step behind. Without a reliable way to track what got made or thrown out, the real cost of a bad call stayed invisible.

The same pain showed up across departments

The problems with Fresh Thyme’s process showed up differently in every department, but the bottom line was the same: No one knew how much of what to make. How much of a primal should become steaks, roasts, or stew meat depended on the person behind the counter. Bakery lacked precise timelines to thaw, proof, bake, and stock fresh items.

In deli, the issue was undeniable. Almost every week, soup and rotisserie chicken topped the shrink report. No one could drill into the root cause or even see if stores were sticking to their pars. No one knew who to coach, or where.

Fresh Thyme’s teams needed clear plans—not 70 different daily judgment calls—built for the demand actually coming through the door.

The solution: Plans that everyone could trust

Josh Cotton, Director of Retail Operations, has spent close to 30 years in grocery. He had one key requirement for their production planning solution: It had to take that daily guess off his teams’ plates.

“What earns my trust is whether something actually works for my teams in the store, day after day.”

— Josh Cotton, Director of Retail Operations

Fresh Thyme trialed Afresh’s Production Planning in a handful of stores first, with deli leading the charge. For the first time, teams started their shifts with a plan that actually accounted for the upcoming promotion, holiday, and turning weather that the paper worksheet never could. Production tasks ran through simple, guided steps in the app, with recommended quantities, recipes, and steps already built in.

Crucially, the guidance matched each department’s needs. Bakery got prep and proofing timelines, meat got cutting recommendations based on open primals and typical yields, and deli got multiple production runs through the day, so a fresh batch of chicken went up when the demand curve called for it, not on a fixed schedule set with someone’s best guess.

The results: The proof showed up on the floor first

Josh worried a new app might get ignored as easily as a sheet of paper. But all he saw was how fast this one stuck: Stores that had followed their paper guides maybe 40% of the time were soon completing 90% of their recipes and production tasks as intended. It wasn’t because of a mandate. Teams found Afresh easy to use and trusted the recommendations.

“Afresh Production Planning is simple and intuitive, so store associates loved it and adherence climbed in a way we never got on paper.”

— Josh Cotton, Director of Retail Operations

With daily decisions now happening in Afresh, corporate teams also got what they’d been missing: a window into store, department, and item-level performance.

“With Afresh, we can finally see what’s happening with production across every store instead of guessing at performance or shrink drivers. Soup and rotisserie chicken would come up in every shrink meeting, and now we have the visibility to act on what isn’t working and coach our teams with real numbers.”

— Josh Cotton, Director of Retail Operations

Deli is where that adherence and coaching showed up as sales wins the fastest. Pre-Afresh, stores were selling out rotisserie chicken on peak days and shrinking on slow days. After Afresh, stores shifted production toward weekend peaks.

With production finally matching demand throughout the week, rotisserie chicken sales increased 70% YoY and deli sales overall grew 8.8%. This meant one of Fresh Thyme’s top shrink items became a top sales driver. The deli counter now holds the right amount at the right times, ready to satisfy customers’ needs.

What’s next: Partnership value that keeps compounding

Numbers make a big impact in a business. But trust is what turns a new technology rollout into a partnership where the value keeps showing up in new places.

Fresh Thyme implemented Afresh’s Store Ordering back in 2019. When they rolled out Production Planning, there was no separate integration to stand up and no gap between what a store was about to order and what it was about to make.

“We started with Afresh in store ordering for produce. As the value became clearer, we kept finding more places to use it — meat, deli, bakery, and now production planning across our fresh departments. It’s been a huge unlock in our organization.”

— Josh Cotton, Director of Retail Operations, Fresh Thyme Market

Fresh Thyme has now worked with Afresh for seven years and successfully implemented Store Ordering and Production Planning across every fresh department. As store and operations teams settle into the relief and results of smarter production planning, the company starts to look ahead and look forward to the next improvement: getting started with Afresh’s Period Ending Inventory to improve yet another process across its stores.