After about four years open in Wellington, Sprouts Farmers Market is set to close its doors for good.
The supermarket chain — which had its grand opening March 27, 2019 — will permanently close its location at 820 S. State Road 7 in the Isla Verde shopping center on Sunday, April 30, a spokesperson confirmed.
Until it closes, the store will remain open 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week.
“Choosing to close a store is always a difficult decision; however, this store is approximately 30% larger than our current prototype and underperformed financially,” Lucas Larson, regional vice president of Sprouts Farmers Market, said in an emailed statement. “Sprouts continues to move forward with our strategy of opening smaller format stores that provide improved box economics and have been reduced to ~23,000 sq. ft.”
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The Wellington store is not alone. According to multiple news reports, Sprouts will close 11 locations this year, with information provided during the company’s fourth quarter earnings call. All of the stores set to close are larger, like Wellington’s 30,000-square-foot space. Sprouts leadership said the stores would have closed earlier, but the company kept them open through the COVID-19 pandemic so the surrounding communities would have access to fresh groceries.
Employees at the Wellington Sprouts store will be able to stay with the company, Larson said. “We greatly appreciate the hard work and dedication these team members have put in over the years and hope they will continue to work for Sprouts,” he said.
When the Wellington store opened at the beginning of 2019, it was Sprouts’ 320th store and the ninth in Florida. That number rose to 386 stores by the end of 2022.
In 2020, Sprouts announced it would pivot to a strategy with smaller stores than the comparatively mammoth Wellington location, which is 30,000 square feet. The smaller-footprint stores cost roughly $1 million less for Sprouts to set up, according to news reports.
Sprouts’ departure from Wellington follows the closure of Fresh Market near the Mall at Wellington Green earlier this year. That store is being demolished, along with spaces on either side of it, to make way for a new Publix.
Sprouts also has stores in Jupiter, Boynton Beach and West Palm Beach. For a full list of locations, click here.
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