Sprouts Farmers Market is planning to open its first Massachusetts location in 2028, followed by dozens more New England stores in the next few years, according to a report in the Boston Business Journal.
The Phoenix-based company plans to open 30-40 stores in southern New England in the near future as it focuses its expansion on the Midwest and Northeast, the report said. It opened its first location in New York earlier this year, marking its furthest push into the Northeastern corner of the country.
“The next frontier is New England on one side and the Midwest on the other,” David McGlinchey, chief strategy officer at Sprouts, told the Journal.
The company also recently confirmed reports that Chicago would be the centerpiece of its planned expansion in the Midwest.
The first publicly disclosed location in the New England area will be a 22,000-square-foot store in Weymouth, Mass., the Journal reported, although it hopes to open four or five additional stores around the same size, according to McGlinchy.
“New England represents an emerging opportunity for Sprouts Farmers Market as we continue to thoughtfully expand our footprint nationwide,” a Sprouts spokesperson told Supermarket News.
The spokesperson declined to confirm a specific timeline for additional expansion, saying that leases have not yet been finalized, other than the Weymouth location.
“We will continue to evaluate future locations across New England based on a range of market factors,” the spokesperson said.
Several sites approved for southern New England
In addition to the Weymouth store, Sprouts also has additional store sites approved in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, the report said. The company has not yet disclosed those specific locations.
As the Journal noted, New England is already a densely stored region with well-established chains that include Stop & Shop, Shaw’s, Market Basket, Whole Foods and Roche Bros., in addition to newcomer Wegmans Food Market.
Speaking during the company’s first-quarter earnings call with analysts, Sprouts CEO Jack Sinclair said the company had nearly 150 new stores approved and more than 105 executed leases in its pipeline. He said the company was focused on building stores that have a smaller footprint—around 23,000 square feet vs. the 32,000 square-foot stores that it had previously been opening—that can drive the same volume of sales more efficiently and can squeeze into more locations.
“That’s giving us a lot of confidence as this plays out in terms of the returns … [and] also in terms of the way the customer is reacting to it,” Sinclair said, citing strong results from recent store openings.
Sprouts is planning to open at least 40 new stores in 2026, including six that opened in the first quarter. The company said it was continuing its aggressive expansion push despite projections that the current year will present challenges.
“The idea of bringing a new format to a new market, it actually fires us all up,” said Sinclair. “It’s quite exciting to be part of seeing all these stores getting built all over the place and going into new markets and seeing people kind of excited by the idea of something new.”
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