Sprouts Operations

[storewanderer]

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?

Yep, that's been my experience!

At least we all agree about Sprouts...

Yet on Google Reviews for various Sprouts (in my area and elsewhere) I keep seeing 5 star reviews. The reviews seem to follow similar themes so I am not sure what is up with that.

[ClownLoach]

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.

Perimeter service departments were slashed immediately under the new CEO. This is the reason why they wanted to get out of large boxes, and why they have gone back to building very small stores. Scratch bakery is completely gone and is thaw and serve, thaw and bake, or frozen dough operation now. I do not believe they are doing much in store with meat either aside from all the marinated stuff that is suspicious, probably meats nearing expiration date. Most meat is now shelf ready. The stores that had the nice Market Corner island with sandwiches and a WFM style salad bar saw it turned into effectively overflow coolers, with bulk displays of Sabra hummus and whatever else might be on sale. And all stores have removed at least one entire island fixture of produce, some as many as three, and much of the wet rack has been replaced with expensive generic Taylor Farms bagged salads and such. Ralphs has an arguably better wet rack for the customer looking for specialty and organic brands with Gotham Greens, Organic Girl and others. If you're shopping at a "big" Sprouts the perimeter departments like Bakery and Meat Cutting etc. should be looked at closely; you will realize they are mothballed and just stocking pre-made items just like SuperTarget was until recently.

This guy doesn't understand that these scratch departments coupled with a high volume, lower priced farmers market produce presentation are why customers went to Sprouts. Their new focus is specifically on special diets like gluten-free, vegan etc. and they make it clear they no longer cater to the mass market customer in their advertising. I do believe that the massive price increases, the replacement of most items with more expensive special diet items, and a significantly improved vitamin department are what is driving up sales... Only problem is this is a short term sales increase that will cap out eventually and then sales will stagnate due to the removal of mainstream items. But I'm sure once the sales trends start to flatten out he will have already moved on, and the chain will be stuck with all these new small box stores that now lack the space and facilities (bakery, meat cutting etc) to restore the assortment and bring back mainstream customers.

Even under Amazon mismanagement, Whole Foods still recognizes that they need to cater to all customers and not just extreme specialty, specific diets - for example they may sell a lot of milk substitutes and vegan cheese, but they also carry a good selection of regular milk and gourmet cheeses (albeit at high prices) so the household where one member needs specific items can still do all the rest of the shopping at WFM on that one trip. If that same family shopped at Sprouts they'd pay the same prices and still have to go shop elsewhere for the rest of their groceries. Maybe this will work for Sprouts in markets where WFM isn't present, but I suspect that they are going to be far less successful where they compete directly.

[storewanderer]

Sprouts claims the small store prototype is to enhance its ESG measurements. Less carbon footprint.

[ClownLoach]

Sprouts claims the small store prototype is to enhance its ESG measurements. Less carbon footprint.

That's a complete crock.

Let's think of all the things they don't do...
- No solar
- No sky lights
- Many stores with florescent lights or inefficient retrofit instead of modern LED
- No motion sensors to reduce energy use on refrigeration lighting
- Countless open "coffin" freezers and coolers without energy saving sliding lids
- Ineffective supply chain
- Inefficient production leading to food waste (excessive markdowns of pre-sliced deli meats and cheeses, baked goods, pre-made sandwiches, etc.)
- And my favorite, leasing really big boxes only to wall off and create empty space (the industry model of inefficiency, dead space plus uses extra building materials)

The building size has virtually zero impact when you're talking about the difference between a 20K and 25-28K box. I've had small stores that used double the energy of much larger stores. There are numerous factors from ceiling height to roofing color to direction the building faces. A large store with a higher roof line will use much less energy than a small store with a low roof line. Furthermore, if the stores were actually busy once again a crowded small box gets warm faster thus requiring more cooling. And how does all the mothballed equipment save when it's sitting instead of being sold or repurposed?

Someone must have realized they are not doing much of anything in the ESG realm and decided to claim the smaller store size as if it was a result of such work. I would bet a million dollars that nobody said "ESG!" when they were making the decision to move back to small prototypes. They just made it up when they realized they needed to say something to the few institutional investors that care about ESG programs.

What a bunch of clowns.

[veteran+]

Sprouts claims the small store prototype is to enhance its ESG measurements. Less carbon footprint.

That's so funny

[veteran+]

Sprouts claims the small store prototype is to enhance its ESG measurements. Less carbon footprint.

That's a complete crock.

Let's think of all the things they don't do...
- No solar
- No sky lights
- Many stores with florescent lights or inefficient retrofit instead of modern LED
- No motion sensors to reduce energy use on refrigeration lighting
- Countless open "coffin" freezers and coolers without energy saving sliding lids
- Ineffective supply chain
- Inefficient production leading to food waste (excessive markdowns of pre-sliced deli meats and cheeses, baked goods, pre-made sandwiches, etc.)
- And my favorite, leasing really big boxes only to wall off and create empty space (the industry model of inefficiency, dead space plus uses extra building materials)

The building size has virtually zero impact when you're talking about the difference between a 20K and 25-28K box. I've had small stores that used double the energy of much larger stores. There are numerous factors from ceiling height to roofing color to direction the building faces. A large store with a higher roof line will use much less energy than a small store with a low roof line. Furthermore, if the stores were actually busy once again a crowded small box gets warm faster thus requiring more cooling. And how does all the mothballed equipment save when it's sitting instead of being sold or repurposed?

Someone must have realized they are not doing much of anything in the ESG realm and decided to claim the smaller store size as if it was a result of such work. I would bet a million dollars that nobody said "ESG!" when they were making the decision to move back to small prototypes. They just made it up when they realized they needed to say something to the few institutional investors that care about ESG programs.

What a bunch of clowns.

EXACTLY!!!!!!

[storewanderer]

Sprouts claims the small store prototype is to enhance its ESG measurements. Less carbon footprint.

That's so funny

You can read more here:

This company is literally fixated with ESG. They have an executive who is in charge of ESG. The big consulting firms were hoping ESG would be the "next big thing" to sell various businesses on after changes in lease accounting which made those firms a fortune. A lot of companies bit at first but many have pulled back and I expect profitability pressures will cause continued pull back at a lot of companies. But Sprouts is fully committed.

https://investors.sprouts.com/esg/envir ... fault.aspx

[ClownLoach]

Sprouts claims the small store prototype is to enhance its ESG measurements. Less carbon footprint.

That's so funny

You can read more here:

This company is literally fixated with ESG. They have an executive who is in charge of ESG. The big consulting firms were hoping ESG would be the "next big thing" to sell various businesses on after changes in lease accounting which made those firms a fortune. A lot of companies bit at first but many have pulled back and I expect profitability pressures will cause continued pull back at a lot of companies. But Sprouts is fully committed.

https://investors.sprouts.com/esg/envir ... fault.aspx

This website only validated my point. They were developing the new small format in 2019-2020 with first completed in 2021. Nothing about small format being part of ESG in those updates. The report is the same as those seen at other companies where Apollo was involved. The reality is that you'll quickly recognize that all of their ESG credited initiatives are either things they were already doing (such as annual manager meetings which BTW aren't great for the environment when considering all the plane travel) or are connected to cost cutting initiatives.

I'm not opposed to ESG initiatives. I am opposed to greenwashing and such which they're great at.

[HCal]

Sprouts in Bakersfield is one of the few I have seen that is still somewhat busy, since the only direct competition is a Lassen's which is overpriced. But it seems that might be changing soon.

[ClownLoach]

Sprouts in Bakersfield is one of the few I have seen that is still somewhat busy, since the only direct competition is a Lassen's which is overpriced. But it seems that might be changing soon.

That site and several others in SoCal such as Murrieta were previously under development by WFM, but it doesn't appear that they are moving forward. They've definitely dropped Murrieta as Sprouts took the spot they were working on. In another thread we discussed the fact that WFM was down to only one location listed as being under development.