Sprouts Farmers Market

Today, after I placed my groceries on the conveyor belt, I looked up to see a woman checking out with a dog situated in the shopping cart. The same cart that customers put groceries in and children sit in.

I shop at Sprouts because I thought it is a health-conscious market. I do not want dogs or any other animal touching anything that my food is directly exposed to. It's just not sanitary. Dogs walk on the ground where all sorts of germs accumulate, step in their urine, etc. Dogs and cats naturally shed their hair. Dogs carry ticks and fleas. Dogs nor cats can tell you if they’re carrying disease. Animals' rear ends aren't necessarily clean of *** they can't wipe themselves. Most dogs walk where other dogs have been.

I spoke to the store manager, who said service dogs are permitted in the store walking, but not in the carts. I can understand that. Dogs or cats in the carts should not be permitted under any circumstances; nor should regular pets or any other animal be allowed to walk around in the store where human food is open and exposed.

If Sprouts allows animals to occupy carts that customers put their food in and for non-service animals free access to walk around inside the store, customers should know.

Knowing that someone is in a food market holding and touching an animal without washing their hands, then touching items in the store as they shop, is concerning. The cart the woman had her dog in today should have been disinfected.

I'd appreciate knowing what Sprouts' policy is for animals in its stores.

Store 949, Cashier Caroline C., POS 004, Transaction 3338,

Friday 2/27/2026, 1:30 PM, My Name Brenda Kidd

Thank you.

Good morning, I have been thinking about this for the last 3 weeks. About 3 weeks ago, a store, the store at SW 119th & S.

Penn in Oklahoma City, had the new manager (will not mention names but you know who she is) fire a 78-year employee who had worked himself into management and did everything ever asked of him. You needed a manager to cover another store for a couple of months, he was there. Stay overnight for new freezer installs, yep, it was him. Closed 4 of the 5 days he worked so none of your other managers had to close, him again.

The person I speak of between your store and others had close to 20 years in the grocery business. This person developed cancer in his lower body a few years back; he would go for treatment and still come to work even though he was tired and might not feel great. He did this time and time again. Step up to early 2025, I think (not sure when we got the new manager).

He had taken a couple of weeks off for vacation (had earned it). Tried to take more time off (again, he had it) but was told he couldn't because he had already taken off 2 weeks. When he would schedule his sick leave to go do his treatments, said manager would take his sick leave away and make him use a regular day off. This happened over and over again.

Step back 3 weeks ago. He was again feeling bad, not able to eat anything, vomiting off and on again, and yet, he still came to work. Closed one night when not feeling well and apparently left an employee, not a customer, but an employee in the store (something that has been told has happened a few times in the past). So, what's your manager's decision?

Let's fire the 8 years he has worked his tail off for us anytime he was asked. Excellent management skills, I might add. So, what was his illness, you ask? His cancer has come back, but this time it's in his brain, but don't worry, you can sleep good at night knowing that in your eyes, you did the right thing.

Want to know who I am? I'm his father and the person I speak of is Chris.

I'd love to tell the other employees in the store (the ones who loved and respected my son) who you truly are. Don't shop there.

Summary of Sprouts Experience

I sent a detailed email to Sprouts outlining how complex rewards programs force customers to fragment their shopping across multiple stores rather than building loyalty to one retailer. I explained how my spending at Sprouts dropped from a potential $800-900/month to only $300-400/month because I now chase deals across 4-5 different stores weeklya behavior their rewards complexity inadvertently created.

My email reached executive leadership and triggered an internal meeting.

Sprouts Chief Marketing Officer, personally called me back on her cell phone the same day. We had a lengthy, substantive conversation where she listened to and addressed all my key concerns: the mental burden of managing multiple apps, register surprise pricing tricks, purchase requirement complexity, and the paradox that loyalty programs are destroying actual loyalty.

Alicia acknowledged my feedback, stated that Sprouts will take my concerns into consideration and possibly revise their rewards program, and gave me her direct cell number with encouragement to contact her with future questions or observations. Theyre also sending a gift card as goodwill.

This response was exceptional because Sprouts is a smaller regional chain (~400 stores) with a flat organizational structure where customer feedback reaches decision-makers directlyunlike mega-chains where complaints disappear into bureaucracy.

The fact that my email sparked an executive meeting and resulted in the CMO personally engaging with me demonstrates that Sprouts views customers as partners whose insights can shape policy, not just data points in a loyalty algorithm.

Bottom line: I sent strategic feedback with business intelligence, and it reached someone who could actually act on it. Thats remarkably rare in retail.

I tried to call the head office to find out why their "Rewards system" is not working on my account but no one ever answered, and it was only 4 p.m. I was on hold for about 15 mins.

and then finally gave up. The person at the La Canada store talked me into giving my phone number and registering and then, when I did, I couldn't get any points. I have been shopping there week after week and I am sure I must have accumulated a lot of points but my account online says "zero"! I wanted to call to see if they could help me fix this problem but, just like every other corporation on earth right now, NO ONE THERE!

I'm so fed up with this. It should against the law to have a huge chain of stores and not be available to answer customers' calls. And one week when I was shopping there, they did not ask me for my phone number for the rewards and I spent over $100. So guess what?

I didn't get any points for that! Very upsetting, especially since every other supermarket asks you for your phone number for the discounts and especially since I've been giving them my business for YEARS.

During my shopping experience today I was looking for some common items like chicken and noodles, and also several unique ingredients for baking. I asked four different individuals for help in locating different products, and each person was so helpful to stop and listen and then try and help me find the item, or in one instance take me to another worker to try and answer my question.

I was so appreciative.

I didn't get their names, but I did check out with Bradley (store 412) who was friendly, efficient, and also very helpful. Thank you, Sprouts, for hiring good people and training them so well.

I have been shopping through Boneys, Henrys, and now the Sprouts name. You continue to become less and less caring about your customers!

From removing popular products to ridiculous sabotage. You are not the caring people you used to be, where you used to do things for your customers! Products that are the number one selling-you remove! I know I have asked!

You down/size things, like your vitamins etcToday I go shopping to find out that the green twist ties are discontinued! When you start having spills all over your floors or people have their food contaminated by your lack of care! Let me know how much money you lose then! People should come before your big bucks!

Where is your heart! It makes me no longer wanting to shop there. I can persuade others to stop too!

Mrs. Mathieu

My wife and I have been long-time Sprouts customers since we first discovered this market. We buy plenty of things from time to time; however, our main go-to item is always a specific type of egg: Happy Egg in the purple box. We generally have always had a pleasant experience when shopping at Sprouts, however, after shopping at the Sprouts location located at: 2630 E. Workman Ave. West Covina, CA 91791 around 9 pm on 10/28/2024, this changed to one where we are now looking for an alternative location to purchase the Happy Eggs.

Here is what happened. We came to this location and had one goal - to purchase the eggs. Our son loves the taste of these eggs and we generally go out of our way to make sure to get them because we love the taste as well. We headed to the egg section and began checking the eggs because we did not once and ended up with a few cracked ones once we got home. While checking, we noticed a few cracked ones, so like we always do, we swapped out the cracked ones for good ones. (Note: we have done this in the past at other locations and other markets and have never had any issues until now.) An associate happened to be nearby and he saw what we were doing and instead of politely asking us not to switch the eggs, as we did not know you could not do that with broken eggs, the associate instead loudly yelled at us and said 'Hey, do you plan on buying all of those eggs you are touching? If not, you can't do that; you can't switch out the eggs.' He pretty much said it so loud that all the other customers around us turned to stare at us as if we were criminals that got caught stealing, even though he was literally right next to us and you can confirm this with your security camera footage. We told him they were cracked and he said we still could not do that, to which we replied, 'Okay, sorry, we didn't know that.' After that, we continued to check for any boxes with cracked eggs and put them aside while looking for boxes without cracked ones and the associate was still standing there next to us, monitoring us as if we were trying to steal the eggs. Then to top it off, another coworker of his, who was his manager but we did not know this at the time, stood behind us on the other side of the frozen foods open container and was watching us also. Other customers noticed this and it really made my wife and I feel uneasy. We did not commit a crime but the associate made it feel like we had.

We quickly picked out the eggs and then left to go pay. Before leaving, we saw the associate walk over to his manager and begin chatting obviously about what had just happened. Once we got to the self-pay kiosk, my wife became really upset and finally decided to ask for a manager. Once the manager arrived, it was the same lady who was chatting with the associate. My wife explained to the manager the situation and how it made us feel really embarrassed when he could have just told us politely and quietly, as he was right next to us. After hearing the story, the manager decided to give us a small discount on the eggs for the incident. After receiving the discount, the manager, who I could clearly hear mention the associate's name as Javier. However, I decided to ask the manager again what the associate's name was and she told me it was 'Kiko'? Which sounds like a lie and she may be trying to cover for her employee. Regardless of the name, to help you identify the incident, the associate was wearing a beanie, had tattoos all over his neck, hands and arms and was wearing black-rimmed glasses.

I would just like to say that this has truly been the worst customer experience we have ever received from a Sprouts location. Overall, it has truly been great before this incident. I will be voicing my experience on social media and any other platform that will receive it so that others are aware of this location and its bad service. It almost felt like racial discrimination because the associate was talking so politely with another lady of another ethnicity but treated us like criminals and spoke loudly enough to bring attention to the incident. I would suggest this associate, Javier or Kiko or whoever, go through customer service training again.