SAN FRANCISCO and LAS VEGAS, NEV., September 16, 2019, 8:30 a.m. PDT — Fresh Thyme Farmers Market®, a rapidly growing Midwest specialty grocer focused on healthy organic products and groceries, announced today that they are partnering with Afresh Technologies, an AI-powered fresh food technology company, to reduce food waste in its stores and make high quality fresh foods more accessible to customers throughout the Midwest. Through this partnership, Fresh Thyme is launching Afresh's ground-breaking in-store Fresh Replenishment tools across the chain.

“As part of our ongoing commitment to bringing healthier, fresher food to all, we’ve partnered with Afresh to reduce food waste and provide our customers with the freshest produce imaginable," said Chris Sherrell, President and CEO of Fresh Thyme. "The demand for the highest quality fresh foods has never been greater, and we're pleased to partner with Afresh to further cement Fresh Thyme's reputation as best-in-fresh. We are a forward-thinking grocery chain that's making big investments in our fresh food supply chain and technology with a commitment to reducing waste and giving customers the best experience possible in fresh!"

Fresh food replenishment is an enormous challenge that has plagued grocers for decades and presents problems that have proved nearly unsolvable. Inefficiencies in the fresh food supply chain led to tens of billions of dollars in fresh food waste in the U.S. grocery industry alone.

Afresh is a fresh food-first technology company based in Silicon Valley that has developed an AI-powered fresh replenishment platform to eliminate food waste, improve its partners' profitability, and make fresher, healthier food more accessible to all. The Afresh team comes from Stanford, Harvard and CMU and is pushing the boundaries of the application of artificial intelligence to fundamentally transform the fresh food supply chain.

"Fresh Thyme is aggressively adopting emerging technologies like Afresh's A.I. solutions to drive our Digital Transformation with a focus on providing unparalleled experiences for our customers," said Ramesh Reddy, CIO at Fresh Thyme. "We believe in exceeding the expectations of our guests by providing exceptionally fresh food at a great value while doing our part to reduce food waste."

"Afresh was founded with the singular goal of using technology to help retailers reduce waste and make high quality, healthy food accessible to all people. We were immediately struck by the forward-thinking leadership at Fresh Thyme—it couldn't be a better fit," said Matt Schwartz, co-founder and CEO of Afresh. "We’re proud to partner with Fresh Thyme to advance their mission of improving the way communities eat by providing fresher, healthier food at incredible values."

ABOUT FRESH THYME FARMERS MARKET®

Fresh Thyme Farmers Market is a full-service specialty retailer focusing on value-priced fresh, healthy, natural and organic offerings. It boasts an extensive produce department with organic and local fruits and vegetables, a natural meat department, healthy deli foods to go, bakery goods, 400 bulk food bins, dairy and frozen, health supplement products, and its own line of organic and natural private label products. Learn more at www.freshthyme.com.