Hardie’s Fresh Foods Doubles Down on Freshness, Selects Blue Ridge to Align Customer Demand with Inventory

Press Releases

ATLANTA, March 27, 2018 – Hardie's Fresh Foods has a rich history in the fresh produce business, providing farm fresh fruit and vegetables to food service and retailers since 1943. Further investing in its distribution operation, the premier fresh food distributor has selected supply chain planning solutions from Blue Ridge to better align its produce inventory with expected demand from its customers. Blue Ridge’s technology will optimize the inventory in Hardie’s four Texas-based distribution centers that total more than 185,000 square feet of refrigerated produce.

“The fresh food business has become infinitely more complex in recent years with large numbers of added SKU’s (stock keeping units) and additional suppliers, so we are excited to implement Blue Ridge’s system,” said Greg Rowe, Chief Operating Officer, Hardie’s Fresh Foods. “This technology will help us manage our complex supply chain and better serve our customers.”

“Retailers work with Hardie’s because they have a long history of delivering top-quality produce,” said Jim Byrnes, Chief Executive Officer, Blue Ridge. “Adding inventory planning and forecasting to their already sterling operations process will ensure that their produce gets to their customers faster, with maximum freshness and longer shelf life.”

The Blue Ridge supply chain platform is the most accurate way for retailers and distributors like Hardie’s to spot and plan for changes in customer demand before they happen. This insight helps Blue Ridge customers reduce costs, improve service levels, and assure product availability to customers without creating a costly inventory surplus.

Blue Ridge was a leader in the most recent Gartner Magic Quadrant for Supply Chain Planning, due to its track record of translating customer data into precise and economically-driven demand and supply plans.

Blue Ridge will host BLUEPrint 2018 in Atlanta on April 22-24 at the Omni Hotel at The Battery Atlanta™.  BLUEPrint is a hands-on annual conference for supply chain leaders, managers and users of Blue Ridge solutions.

About Hardie’s Fresh Foods

Founded in 1943, Hardie’s has grown to a fleet of more than 160 trucks and 185,000 square feet of refrigerated warehouse space across the state of Texas. Hardie’s carries a full line of premium brands for food service and offers a wide range of retail products and services for mass merchandisers and grocery to small convenience and liquor stores. Hardie’s customized service ranges from providing small convenience pack sizes to complete seasonal resets. For more information, please visit www.hardies.com.

About Blue RIdge

Blue Ridge Supply Chain Planning and Price Optimization solutions empower distributors and retailers to tap into undiscovered margin through enterprise-wide inventory intelligence, automation and synchronization. Blue Ridge uniquely combines demand forecasting with pricing strategy, so that businesses can proactively understand the unpredictable and allocate the right inventory – right-priced across the entire mix – to accelerate top- and bottom-line results. In a world where the only constant is change, Blue Ridge provides more certainty, more speed, and more assurance – so companies can see the why behind the buy, and respond faster to the unexpected. That’s why major retailers and distributors rely on Blue Ridge for a more foreseeable future. For more information, go to www.blueridgeglobal.de