Over the next few weeks, online retailer Fresh Direct will begin selling its private food brand called Just Fresh Direct, which will include mostly organic, natural and artisanal offerings.
There will be 20 Just Fresh Direct SKUs available to customers before the end of the year, including eggs, milk, olive oil, granola, butter and flour. The focus on the food products is clean labels, natural and organic, Emma Fuerst Frelinghuysen, senior director, private brands for Fresh Direct, told Store Brands Decisions. The dairy products are all organic. The company’s plan is to launch 150 more SKUs next year.
While the company has had some private brands, there was no strategy, but sales velocity revealed customers were very interested in buying private brands from Fresh Direct, according to Frelinghuysen. “We decided to get serious about private brands about a year ago when my role was created and we partnered with Daymon Worldwide,” she said. “Daymon has really supported us and helped us think through the strategy and the branding.”
Research indicated customers want transparency and clean labels as well as natural and organic ingredients and products. “They really want a brand they can trust,” Frelinghuysen said.
Fresh Direct delivers fresh food from farm to table in the metropolitan New York and Philadelphia area, and plans to do the same with its own food brands. The private brand eggs, for example, are organic and sourced from a family farm in Pennsylvania, while the organic milk comes from a family farm in New York state. The focus is also on small-batch artisanal foods, as is the case with its Just Fresh Direct granola, which is hand-rolled and made in upstate New York.
“For us, it’s really about where the product comes from and what’s in it, which forces us more toward the artisanal side, because large granola makers likely would not be able to meet our product specifications,” Frelinghuysen told Store Brands Decisions. “As a result, we’ve forged great relationships with small suppliers who are willing to work with us. We want to continue to find suppliers who are willing to grow with us.”
The company also launched a non-foods private brand called Cloud 9, which includes household paper products, and storage and trash bags. Additional private brand launches are on the drawing board, but Frelinghuysen said: “We’re just not ready to talk about them yet.”
