Thrive Market opens distribution center in Nevada

Thrive Market, a healthy living e-commerce company, has opened a new distribution facility in northern Nevada’s Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.

Thrive Market is an online grocery retailer that sells healthy, organic and natural products at wholesale prices. The company ramped up distribution in their new facility several weeks ago. They plan to hire up to 400 new employees and will be investing $3.5 million in capital equipment toward their new operation. They currently have around 115 employees working at the new distribution center.

“We actually had a number of folks make the move out to Reno,” Nick Green, co-founder and co-CEO of Thrive Market, said in a phone interview with NNBW prior to the Aug. 17 announcement about the new facility.

This new distribution center replaces their former, smaller distribution center located in Commerce, Calif. Their new 300,000-square-foot distribution center is LEED certified and will service the western half of the United States. Thrive Market also has a distribution center in Batesville, Ind. According to Green, they will now be able to deliver 85 percent of orders in less than two days.

“It has been great so far,” Green said about working in Nevada. “It was a surprisingly smooth launch.”

Thrive Market’s mission is to make high-quality, healthy food affordable and accessible to Americans. According to Green, 70 percent of Americans do not live in driving distance of a health food market and 97 percent of Americans can’t pay the premiums for healthy foods.

The company uses a Costco like membership model where customers pay $60 per year to buy healthy, organic goods online at prices that are 25 to 50 percent below retail prices. Orders over $49 ship for free. According to Green, 90 percent of Thrive Market’s orders qualify for free shipping.

The company donates one membership to low-income families and individuals for every membership they sell. This helps the company to further their social mission to provide affordable healthy food options.

“What is so exciting is the business and the social mission are the same thing,” Green said.

The company is headquartered in California and was co-founded by Green, Gunnar Lovelace, Sasha Siddhartha and Kate Mullings. Many venture capitalists originally rejected the idea believing that there would not be a market.

“That is totally not the case,” Green said. “Our growth has been fast and furious.”

Since 2014, the company has grown from 15 employees to more than 400 employees. They currently have 5 million registered users on the site and 300,000 paid memberships.

Thrive Market has also started creating their own private labeled products. Green explained that while many brands have been eager to sell their products on their website there are still some products that the pricing isn’t as low as they would like to see it. By creating products with their own private label, they can work directly with suppliers, packers or even farmers to create high-quality products at prices that are up to 10 percent cheaper.

They now have over 70 Thrive labeled products and plan to have 150 by the end of the year.

“We have been really aggressive on it,” Green said about adding Thrive labeled products.

The company is also at the forefront of a petition to urge the USDA to allow food stamps to be used online. They currently have more than 250,000 signatures and have received support on the initiative from a number of celebrities and politicians as well as receiving recognition from many nation publications.

Gov. Brian Sandoval, Storey County Manager Pat Whitten and CEO of EDAWN Mike Kazmierski welcomed executives from Thrive Market to northern Nevada at a ceremony held Wednesday, August 17 at the Atlantis Casino Resort.

Thrive Market received business incentives from the Governor’s Office of Economic Development in July. According to Green, these incentives were a big part of the decision to open the facility in Nevada.

“Nevada is very hospitable to business and Reno has been very good at attracting e-commerce companies to northern Nevada,” Green said.

According to Whitten, Thrive Market joins 125 other companies who have settled in TRIC.

“I really appreciate the warm welcome and am excited to be part of northern Nevada,” Green said at the press conference.

For more information about open positions in the TRIC distribution center, visit http://thrivemarketcareers.com/. Applications will be accepted on-site at the facility located on Milan Drive.