Sprouts Farmers Market 2013 Annual Report Download - page 12

Table of Contents
The below diagram shows a sample layout of our stores:
Customer service is critical to our culture and we place great importance on training our team members on customer
service and product knowledge to ensure there is friendly, knowledgeable staff in every department. Our team members
are trained and empowered to proactively engage with customers throughout the entire store. This includes investing
time with them on the benefits of different vitamins, sharing ways to prepare a meal or cutting a piece of produce or
opening a package to offer customers product tastings throughout the store. We consider customer education and
service to be particularly important as many conventional supermarket customers that have not shopped our stores
believe that eating healthy is expensive and difficult. At Sprouts, we believe in our motto of “Healthy Living for Less” and
strive to provide more consumers with the opportunity to offer their families great tasting, healthy, natural and organic
products for less.
Our stores are typically staffed with 75 to 85 full and part-time team members including a store manager, an assistant
store manager, eight department managers, five assistant department managers, store office staff and other team
members.
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We typically dedicate approximately 15% of a store’s selling square footage to produce, which we believe is significantly
higher than many of our peers. The stores are designed with open floor plans and low displays (typically set to a height
of about six feet), intended to provide an easy-to-shop environment that allows our customers to view the entire store.
The design of our stores is a farmers market style, with wooden crates stacked with fresh produce and self-service bulk
food barrels and bins in a bright and open atmosphere. We believe our stores provide customers with a differentiated
shopping experience and promote greater interaction with our well-trained and enthusiastic team members, resulting in
what we believe is an enhanced level of customer service.
• Culture of Service . We are committed to providing and believe we have best-in-class customer service, which builds
trust with our customers and differentiates the Sprouts shopping experience from that of many of our competitors. We
design our stores to maximize customers’ interactions with our team members. For example, in addition to an open floor
plan and low displays, we do not have aisle numbers or self-service checkout lines in our stores, which promotes
interaction between customers and team members. We believe this interaction provides an opportunity to educate
customers and provides a valued, differentiated customer service model, which enhances customer loyalty and
increases visits and purchases over time.