Fresh Thyme opened in Waite Park today, their 6th Minnesota store. They also opened in Kenosha today, their 2nd Wisconsin store. This brings their total store count to over 50 stores in 10 states, and 16 more coming. Here in Minnesota, the St. Louis Park store on Excelsior Blvd is next up for the chain.
The Waite Park store opens in the former KMart building here, joining Dick’s Sporting Goods and Five Below.
Fresh Thyme opened in Plymouth on Wednesday at the corner of Highway 55 and Vicksburg. This new center developed by Oppidan includes Goodwill that opened last month, and a Starbucks under construction. As was true at their previous openings, one of their first day promotions is a free give-away of a bag of groceries to the first 250 customers when the door opens at 7:00. The first customer showed up at the Plymouth store at 2:30 in the morning to be first in line! More Fresh Thymes coming: Waite Park is next up, followed by St. Louis Park and Prospect Park. Fresh Thyme is represented by Roger Lanahan of Cambridge Commercial.
With the opening last week of two more stores, Fresh Thyme has four locations and more coming. The Savage store opened in 30,000 sf of the former Rainbow store, with the Vadnais Heights store of the same size going into the former Festival Foods store. By all accounts, they opened with lots of buzz and great sales. Their Bloomington store opened last year, and was the only site until Apple Valley opened this spring. The next location to open is Plymouth at Highway 55 and Vicksburg in mid-September, along with St. Louis Park, Prospect Park, Waite Park and West St. Paul in the works.
They also added liquor to their offerings, with the Vadnais Heights stores having a liquor store. Plymouth will also offer liquor, and more will be added to future locations if feasible.