Sprouts Real Estate Summit
Earlier this month my dad and I had the pleasure of visiting Sprouts’ Head Quarters for their annual Real Estate Summit where we learned about all things Sprouts!
The topics that were covered were: Store Planning, Deal Structure, Market Research, Legal, Construction, and Portfolio Optimization. This summit was led by David McGlichey (Chief Strategy Officer) and Dan Croce (SVP East Division) who were both very engaging and insightful MCs all day long!
We have written in past on some other companies that we have been able to visit their HQs, but what made this experience is that we were led through the ins and outs of how Sprouts lives and breathes so that we may be able to best assist them on their new prototypes, roll out models, deal structures, financial walk throughs of their entities, legal education and explanation, understanding their construction timelines and why they need specific amounts of time, all to help us brokers and developers in the room understand what makes their stores the most successful.
As you could only imagine, there was a lot to take in that day, so I will leave you with just a few of my favorite key takeaways.
I will start with a fun fact! Sprouts locally sources all of their produce from farms that are no further than 500 mi from each location - supporting local farms and businesses, while guaranteeing fresh and unique products to your local Sprouts!
I think my favorite part of the day was learning about the operations aspect. I have always been fascinated by customer analysis, even back in college. It is vital for groercy stores to hone in on the functionality of the store and see where people are spending the most money and trying to understand why and how they can turn more areas in the store to additional purchase points. Sprouts walked us through their newest prototype, which I am sure this is no shock to anyone reading this, is shrinking down to optimize square footage. The new store will be roughly 23,000 SF and they are looking to be in Shopping Centers, Power Centers, and get this, even are looking at free-standing pads - I know crazy!
This new prototype will have a local’s farmers market look and feel with local touches (love this).
As far as interior layout goes, not too much is changing, but areas that they would like to highlight are the butcher shop, produce section, and their hot new items (my favorite part of the store). In the new prototype locations, the butcher will be located at the front side of the store. For those that have not had Sprouts’ meat, it is some of the best you can your hands on without seeking out a specialty butcher. Walking by this, you will go to the heart and soul of the store, the produce section, where you will find all things fresh and organic beautifully displayed at the perfect eye level. Now for the “must try items” and my favorite part, Sprouts will be putting more focus on engaging with their customers to try new items that they recommend. Even in existing stores, they will be adding more display cases that proudly show their “hot new items” that you should try by that will be located around the produce areas as you walk back to the frozen/snack sections. I think this is so smart, especially to drive repeat visits for customers to come in and check out new suggested items each week.
If you are interested in seeing this new prototype for yourself, there will be a brand new Sprouts opening up this upcoming May at the Centennial & Losee intersection in Las Vegas, NV.
Now for the most exciting part and probably why all of you are reading this, Sprouts is very active and looking to expand their stores rapidly within the next three years. They would like to open over 200 new stores nationwide by 2026 – see great news!
If you have any sites that you would like to shoot our way whether in our market or elsewhere, we will make sure it gets to the right people for consideration.
Thanks for reading!