Sprouts Operations

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Re: Sprouts Operations

Post by veteran+ »

The Sprouts in my general area (W. Hollywood, B.H. and more...) are just not cutting it.

The issues are quality, variety (still WAY too many vitamins in such a small footprint) and unqualified and untrained employees. Also, store design flow is just plain bad!

For such a small store you would think that every employee would know every inch of that store accompanied by respectable product knowledge.
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Re: Sprouts Operations

Post by storewanderer »

veteran+ wrote: April 9th, 2022, 7:14 am The Sprouts in my general area (W. Hollywood, B.H. and more...) are just not cutting it.

The issues are quality, variety (still WAY too many vitamins in such a small footprint) and unqualified and untrained employees. Also, store design flow is just plain bad!

For such a small store you would think that every employee would know every inch of that store accompanied by respectable product knowledge.
The attitude of employees at Sprouts has been poor for years. I have not observed many grocery stores with such disengaged and indifferent staff before. My favorite was a cashier who put a big button on her shirt that said "ID" and if someone bought alcohol she'd take and move forward and put that button in the customer's face. I asked her what that was and she said she got tired of asking people for ID. I don't even think 10% of customers at Sprouts buy alcohol so I don't know what the deal with that was. Sometimes you come across someone who is exceedingly friendly and they are always a new employee. Most of the time I don't see them again.

Product knowledge and ability to help find items? I will say a few times when I have asked for help finding something in the vitamin area they have been able to show me where it is. The manager's office is just off the vitamin section in the store in Reno so if I need help I just go to that door.

If all of the Sprouts Stores disappeared tomorrow and were replaced by Trader Joe's Stores, I would be very very happy.
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Re: Sprouts Operations

Post by Alpha8472 »

I have noticed the service get worse at Sprouts over the past year. There is constant turnover. New employees are seen all the time. The old employees have disappeared.

The vitamin section is huge, but the sales seem low. The prices are absurdly high. Most people will just buy online for cheaper. I never see people restocking any more. The store is so shorthanded now. Most times at night there is just one cashier who has to oversee the self checkouts and run the only open cash register. Many nights, the self checkouts get turned off and the checkout line takes 25 minutes even with a small number of customers. Do they even have any grocery baggers or shopping cart people any more?

The deli counter has $4.99 custom sandwiches, but there are no employees at the counter to take your order. Some days there are no in store baked breads at all. Did the only baker call out sick?

The worst part was buying $4.99 Pineapple muffins only to get home and found out they are mango peach muffins with coconut. I am allergic to all three main ingredients. I took them back to the store and they gave me a refund. However, if this were by the book, Sprouts would have to issue a recall and remove all muffins from the store. They would also have to ask all customers to return their muffins to the store for a refund. They mislabel their muffins and keep selling them mislabeled.
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Re: Sprouts Operations

Post by storewanderer »

Alpha8472 wrote: April 9th, 2022, 10:03 pm I have noticed the service get worse at Sprouts over the past year. There is constant turnover. New employees are seen all the time. The old employees have disappeared.

The vitamin section is huge, but the sales seem low. The prices are absurdly high. Most people will just buy online for cheaper. I never see people restocking any more. The store is so shorthanded now. Most times at night there is just one cashier who has to oversee the self checkouts and run the only open cash register. Many nights, the self checkouts get turned off and the checkout line takes 25 minutes even with a small number of customers. Do they even have any grocery baggers or shopping cart people any more?

The deli counter has $4.99 custom sandwiches, but there are no employees at the counter to take your order. Some days there are no in store baked breads at all. Did the only baker call out sick?

The worst part was buying $4.99 Pineapple muffins only to get home and found out they are mango peach muffins with coconut. I am allergic to all three main ingredients. I took them back to the store and they gave me a refund. However, if this were by the book, Sprouts would have to issue a recall and remove all muffins from the store. They would also have to ask all customers to return their muffins to the store for a refund. They mislabel their muffins and keep selling them mislabeled.
There are still no self checkouts in my area even in a store that is under a year old. I wish they had self checkouts, it would be a much better experience than the wait time and attitude of some (not all...) of the Sprouts cashiers.

I've been sold bad meat and I was met with indifference when I called the store and reported it to the store director. I went back to the store and brought it straight to him and he sent me over to a checkstand to wait in line to have a regular cashier do the refund. No apology, no offer of replacement, no communication of trying to correct the issue going forward. That was my last time purchasing any meat or deli from Sprouts. I don't think that store director is there anymore though.

I am not surprised they screwed up the muffins. Those were seasonal muffins and they looked pretty much the same. The employees need to be better organized or they need to not sell so many muffin varieties that look alike that it confuses the employees. Or the supplier needs to put them in different color muffin cups (that would still require the employees to pay attention though). This is why many stores sell muffins that all have a distinct appearance so it is easy for the employees to tell them apart during packaging.
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Re: Sprouts Operations

Post by storewanderer »

Sprouts has gone out of business in Wichita, KS and exited the market. The store opened in January 2017 and closed April 1, 2022. I was at that store during its grand opening. I am very surprised it is closing. This must be one of the shortest lived Sprouts. Also I find it odd to see Sprouts exit a geography like Wichita entirely.

Dillons must be awfully stiff competition. They do an above average job for an interior US chain on fresh produce though and the store across from Sprouts is a Marketplace (expanded smaller store) so it is as good as a Dillons can be.

Surprised the super low volume Whole Foods there is still open. I suppose Sprouts closing may help them out. Actually expected Sprouts to be successful in Wichita and be the thing that caused the Whole Foods to go bust. Funny how things seem to have happened. I do wonder how this store did 2017-2020 as Sprouts though.

Funny how Natural Grocers, Trader Joe's, and Whole Foods can all make a go of it in Wichita but not Sprouts.
Also there is some local health food format there with a couple stores.

I think this is a sign of things to come for Sprouts in numerous markets outside California and also some of the more competitive markets in California.
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Re: Sprouts Operations

Post by SamSpade »

At first I thought Wichita might be too small for all this competition, but I now see via Wikipedia, the 2020 census provides that:
The Wichita metro area had a population of 647,610 in 2020


So it is interesting that Sprouts didn't stick around, but perhaps the performance was marginal with all those other options in the same area. Kroger has a pretty extensive natural / organic selection in some stores too, which could further eat into that market. Interestingly, I think Wichita has more grocery diversity than most of Oklahoma (and some of Texas).
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Re: Sprouts Operations

Post by storewanderer »

Sprouts trying one store then giving up in Wichita is very interesting. I think it is a sign of things to come for Sprouts.

As you point out given its population it could support multiple Sprouts.

The thing with Wichita is there is literally only one conventional there, Dillons. And luckily Kroger went ahead and did a lot of remodels and expansions there 5 to 10 years ago because before the store base was pretty dated. In Oklahoma there are more options (not saying they are very good...) in OKC and TUL.
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Re: Sprouts Operations

Post by retailfanmitchell019 »

storewanderer wrote: April 11th, 2022, 12:10 pm The thing with Wichita is there is literally only one conventional there, Dillons. And luckily Kroger went ahead and did a lot of remodels and expansions there 5 to 10 years ago because before the store base was pretty dated. In Oklahoma there are more options (not saying they are very good...) in OKC and TUL.
Dillons got lucky to be the only conventional in Wichita after the Albertsons exit 20 years ago. I think Albertsons entered Wichita by acquiring Skaggs-Alpha Beta stores there. They built a store in Wichita that is still open today as a Dillons.

Dillons (via Baker's) took advantage of the Albertsons Omaha exit, buying 3 stores. From what I understand about Albertsons in Omaha, they had good volume stores, but low market share (probably lack of critical mass).
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Re: Sprouts Operations

Post by ClownLoach »

I suspect that their time under private ownership of Apollo was not good for culture or engagement of employees. Apollo has a reputation for relentless purging to cut costs and installing brutal, aggressive leaders to crack the whip after cutting labor to the bone. Sprouts was on a list a few years after being taken over as one of the 10 worst places in America to work. They are a toxic company. I know that Sprouts since has gone public but the damage is pretty much permanent in these cases - it isn't like they can raise payroll back up to the pre-Apollo levels without Wall Street getting angry, nor can they bring back the good people who have left.
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Re: Sprouts Operations

Post by storewanderer »

ClownLoach wrote: April 14th, 2022, 1:49 pm I suspect that their time under private ownership of Apollo was not good for culture or engagement of employees. Apollo has a reputation for relentless purging to cut costs and installing brutal, aggressive leaders to crack the whip after cutting labor to the bone. Sprouts was on a list a few years after being taken over as one of the 10 worst places in America to work. They are a toxic company. I know that Sprouts since has gone public but the damage is pretty much permanent in these cases - it isn't like they can raise payroll back up to the pre-Apollo levels without Wall Street getting angry, nor can they bring back the good people who have left.
It seems like Sprouts cannot be successful given the situation you describe above. It feels like an expand quick, crash, and burn scenario that is playing out.

We will see how many more random markets get exited. Wichita may be a one off but my prediction is it is a sign of things to come and we will see them exit additional geographies.

These chains that try to do this weird geographical expansion unless they run extremely high volume (WinCo...) into far flung territories with grocery and only have a store or two in a given market. It never works. It didn't work for Super Kmart. It doesn't work for Super Target. It didn't work for The Fresh Market. It didn't work for "Lucky's Market." And it looks like it isn't working for Sprouts either. Some Asian chains seem to work under this strategy but if you look at those stores the H Marts, 99 Ranch, etc. they tend to be quite high volume operations.

Still I would expect we will see Sprouts stay around in certain core territories where they have a high store count and in enough cases lousy competition like California.
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