Supermarket Perimeter - November 2019 - 58

COMPANY PROFILE

AHOLD'S RHODE ISLAND
PROCESSING FACILITY/
INNOVATION CENTER
by Andy Nelson

CUT FRUIT AND VEGETABLES,
leaf, grain and pasta salads, sandwiches, wraps, and other grocery
deli and grab and go favorites will
be among the foods produced at
a new Ahold Delhaize USA central kitchen in North Kingstown,
Rhode Island.
Retail Business Services,
the services company of
Ahold Delhaize USA, which is
co-headquartered in Quincy,
Massachusetts, and Salisbury,
North Carolina, will run the facility through its subsidiary, Inﬁnity
Fresh Kitchen.

The facility will initially provide
fresh foods for Ahold's Hannaford
and Stop & Shop grocery stores.
In addition to being a central
kitchen, the building will house a
culinary innovation center.
"As the services company of
Ahold Delhaize USA, the largest
grocery retail group on the East
Coast, Retail Business Services is
charged with ﬁnding innovative
solutions that enable the local
grocery brands we support to
focus on serving their customers," says Roger Wheeler, president of Retail Business Services.

"Inﬁnity Fresh Kitchen is the latest
example of this innovation, which
will help our retail partners bring
the latest fresh, convenient items
to their customers."
The culinary innovation center
in the facility will test new, fresh,
private brand food concepts, says
Jacqueline Ross, Retail Business
Service's vice president of private
brands innovation.
"We want to create food items
that perfect the expected and
delight consumers with the unexpected," Ross says. "We're excited
to allocate a portion of the space

in this facility to private brand
product innovation, particularly fresh, nutritious items and
preparations."
Retail Business Services purchased the facility from Salinas,
California-based Taylor Farms,
which will continue to manage
the facility's operations and
workforce. Once operational,
the facility is expected to initially
add about 250 jobs to the Rhode
Island economy and additional
jobs over time.
"We're pleased to work with
Retail Business Services on this
innovative facility," says Bruce
Taylor, CEO of Taylor Farms. "We
look forward to completing the
outﬁtting of the facility and getting operations underway in the
coming months."
Construction is underway to
outﬁt the building for Inﬁnity
Fresh Kitchen, and initial operations at the facility are expected
to begin this fall.
Retail Business Services
currently provides services to
six East Coast grocery brands,
including Food Lion, Giant Food,
GIANT/MARTIN'S, Hannaford
and Stop & Shop, as well as the
country's largest online grocery
retailer, Peapod.
Retail Business Services leverages the scale of the local brands
to drive synergies and provides
industry-leading expertise,
insights and analytics to local
brands to support their strategies
with services including information technology, merchandising,
marketing and sourcing services,
private brand products and many
other services.

Cut produce, salads, sandwiches, wraps and other grocery and grab and go items will be produced for
Hannaford and Stop & Shop stores on the East Coast at Ahold's new Rhode Island facility.
58 - NOVEMBER 2019

www.supermarketperimeter.com

The Rhode Island central kitchen/
innovation center comes on the
heels of another Retail Business Services opening. In June,
the company opened its new

PHOTOS: AHOLD

Technology office
also opened
http://www.supermarketperimeter.com
Supermarket Perimeter - November 2019

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