marketreportblog wrote: ↑December 31st, 2023, 6:30 pm
Coming back to this thread to mention I shopped at a Sprouts for the first time in years today and I was really surprised how bad it was. I’m in Denver, CO visiting family and we’ve been mostly shopping at Safeway but stopped in a Sprouts we were driving by. The bakery was particularly pathetic — at least from what I saw, Safeway’s bakery was way better. Sprouts didn’t even have cakes, as far as I could tell? Just a few squares of really sad-looking vanilla frosted vanilla cake. The muffins were weirdly puffy and light and Safeway’s were much better. And all the prices were $0.50 or so higher than Safeway. Most interesting, though, was that the organic grocery items were labeled with price tags featuring an italic O in an oval with the word ORGANIC under it in such a design that it could easily be mistaken for O Organics at a glance. Anyone else seen that? And does that all sound consistent with Sprouts elsewhere?
Yes, this is pretty typical for Sprouts. Bakery does not have available store packaged cakes other than slices. There are some thaw and sell larger cakes usually gluten free or something or some other specialty available. I'm not sure if they take orders for cakes, I've never asked or seen any marketing for it. Their muffins used to be pretty good, but they usually don't look good and haven't for years, and the price has shot way up to 5.99/4 and something like 1.79/1, so I haven't bought them in a while; I did get some Pumpkin ones 4ct .99 around Halloween and they still had 4 days left before sell by but were not good, I ate about 1/4 of one and threw the rest away.
I'll have to look at the tag, I've seen their tags that highlight Organic, but never made the connection to O Organics.
I also find Sprouts produce to be pretty terrible (especially for what they are charging); stuff often doesn't look fresh and the department doesn't have nearly the amount of labor or promotion it once did. I also find their meat to be quite terrible again freshness issues and way too high of a price for what they are selling.
I guess their grocery aisles are okay and nutrition area will do in a pinch.
I've seen some stores in SoCal and Las Vegas the past year that still have very nice looking produce departments. Wasn't impressed in AZ either and that is where their headquarters is.
