Hello, everyone.

This is Omni Talk Retail.

I'm Chris Walton.

And I'm Anne Mazinga.

And we are coming to you live from the FMI conference, courtesy of Simbi.

We're at the simbi booth, booth 108.

We'll be here for the next two days.

Ann.

Two days.

So much content coming.

So much content.

More content, I think, than we've ever produced per hour of any conference, any show in our history.

And I'm excited.

We've got our running shoes on.

We're ready.

We do, we do.

And to kick us off.

To kick off interviews today, we have Stan Switten, the VP of Non Perishable Grocery at Sprouts.

Stan, welcome to omnitalk.

First of all, thank you.

Thank you very much, Chris.

And we're excited to have you kick off our coverage, too, because we actually.

Or specifically, I think I actually named Sprouts our Grocer of the year for 2024.

So congratulations for that as well.

Thank you.

Tons of great success.

Yes.

The team's super proud of the acknowledgement and excited about 2025.

Well, Stan, let's start with giving our audience a little bit of background on what your role is at Sprouts and kind of what kind of falls under your purview there.

Okay.

I'm a merchant, so we're responsible for what we carry, what we sell it for, and where it's placed in the store.

And I have five departments under my desk, so I have grocery, dairy, frozen beer, and wine in bulk.

And I have four directors that lead those respective departments.

And, Stan, where did you start?

Like, you've been in the stores for a while, right?

Yeah, I've been a.

I've been a grocer all my life.

Pretty proud to say that I'm a grocer.

I've been doing it for 37 years and started in Arizona with a local chain there and have progressed, you know, over time.

Yeah, Stan and I were.

We were chatting before we got started.

It turns out he went to my rival high.

One of my rival high schools, which is right down the street from.

From where I grew up in Arizona as well.

All right, so.

So you've got a lot of categories under your purview.

How does your job ladder up to the overall sprout strategy that's been so successful these past few years?

Or said another way?

What do you focus on for 2025 in your job?

Our team is 100% committed to, you know, a relentless pursuit of our core customer.

And how we show up is through driving innovation and differentiation.

We very much want to have a healthy, well balanced, good nutrition in our stores that meet the customer's health and wellness needs overall and what they eat and what they put in their body.

Well, we toured a lot of Sprouts locations in Phoenix when Chris and I were there last year.

It quickly became one of my favorite places to shop because of the little section right when you walk in of all the new and, I guess, testable.

Products right now, like, it's our Innovation Center.

Innovation Center.

You're describing our Innovation Center.

Yes.

Thank you.

So I'm curious, in your role and with the success that Sprouts has had, what do you attribute to that success?

Are there products that you carry?

Is there a selection or something about the store experience?

What do you think it really is that makes Sprouts as successful as it has been?

I would say we know who our customer is.

We have a very clear line of sight to who we want to shop in our stores.

And a lot of the decisions we make are grounded in that customer and what they need from us.

You know, as you talk about the Innovation center, we have a chief foraging officer, Kim Coffin, who's an amazing.

She's amazing.

She's an amazing woman.

Yeah, I love her job.

She actually hired me.

Yep, she hired me.

Shout out to Kim.

And it's the second time I got to work with Kim.

I worked with her in a previous role at Albertsons back in the day, and when I had the opportunity.

When we had the opportunity to reconnect at Sprouts, she hired me.

And it's been a great eight years.

I'll be nine years there in March.

So Kim runs our innovation team, and they're the tip of the spear.

You know, we're very aggressive.

We pursue cool, unique brands that are healthy and fit our ingredient standards.

And Kim's team is on the tip of the spear.

With the Innovation center constantly cycling, you know, new brands that might be smaller or.

We're kind of like, this may or may not work.

And that Innovation center gives us the opportunity to really see how that works in store, live, and then we can make a decision if it graduates to the shelf or.

Or doesn't.

And how does Sprouts do that, Stan?

Like what.

What do you think is unique about Sprouts as an organization that you are able to bring in?

Because some of them are, like, very.

You know, they're.

They're still pretty early brands that you're bringing in, but you're able to put them on shelf and I'm shopping them right next to the, the Sprouts favorites that you've carried for a long time.

Like, what is it about the organization or the culture that allows you to facilitate bringing in these, these new brands?

Well, we have an amazing culture at Sprouts that reflects who we are.

And you know, Kim's team, Kim has a core group of folks that she works with in the industry that helps us find cool, innovative items.

And our category management team, you know, best in class and they aggressively pursue innovation and they have a lot of relationships.

So we take a lot of innovation directly to the shelf and work collaboratively with the foraging team on, you know, what an item is, where it should be placed in the store, what its life cycle might be.

And, and are we going straight to shelf or the innovation center or whatever?

But, but we're, we're aggressive and we, and we, we thrive on it.

So it's a very difficult to execute.

It's very difficult to bring some of that to market.

So there's a lot of pain involved.

But, but it's fun, It's a very fun journey and it's great to meet some of the founders and some of the, the folks that are in, in our channel and they're passionate, passionate people that believe in what they do.

So it's fun to partner with them and get to know them.

I bet.

And I imagine your customer wants that too.

You mentioned the customer before.

What are some of the defining characteristics that you would call out of the sprouts customer?

The sprouts customer wants high quality, whatever they're eating.

I mean, they want high quality, good, nutrient dense food.

And it's grounded in attributes and reason to believe on why we sell the item and why we carry it.

So it's a very symbiotic relationship with them.

And like I said earlier, we pursue them in a meaningful way.

We want to show up for them in a genuine, genuine, sincere way with good food.

Right.

So there's a lot of intentionality in the items you're putting into the store in terms of the thought process that goes into them.

Yeah, I'm doing a lot of meetings here at FMI and a lot of the brands I speak to, I'm very, very clear.

Every facing, every item on the shelf matters.

It's sprouts.

There is no room for something that's not doing well.

Every facing.

Because we have small stores, we're very, you can walk in the front door, look across the store, see our beautiful produce department.

We have some of the highest quality Meat.

In the industry, we have a vitamins department that I'd put against anybody.

Bulk department that is, you know, hundreds of items in loose bulk that you can shop and buy.

So we show up, and we really try to meet our customer where they're at and give them the items that they want every day.

All right, so I want to ask you a fun question now as we're kicking off this conference.

You've got a lot of categories under your watch.

Just to name a few of them, I wrote them down.

Grocery, dairy, bulk, frozen, and beer and wine.

Now, my next question could be asked, like asking you to pick between your favorite children, but do you have a favorite of those categories in your long career in retail and particularly in grocery?

I've got four directors that just perked up right there when they heard that question.

And I love all my children equally.

Is my answer.

No.

I mean, I love healthy food.

And as a grocer, I didn't know a lot about food when I started with Sprouts nine years ago.

And I was shocked how long a career I'd had and really hadn't read an ingredient label and understood what people were consuming and my role in that.

And it's been a very nice journey in the last nine years to learn all about the different departments in the store and what we sell and why we're different, what makes us different.

And it's just.

It's.

I'm very proud of the company that I work for.

Yeah, it gives you a lot of purpose, I imagine.

Yeah.

If I'm on a plane and I'm wearing a Sprouts shirt, and I've worked for five different retailers, the first thing somebody will say is, do you work for Sprouts?

And I'll be like, I do.

I do.

I see that idea.

And then the next word they'll say to me is, I love sprouts.

And it's nine out of 10 times that.

And then the next thing is, when are you putting a store near me?

Because I used to live in Colorado and now I don't.

And.

And I'm like, just give us five minutes.

Just give us five minutes.

We'll be there.

We'll be there.

We have an aggressive growth plan.

You do.

I'm excited.

We're also waiting with bated breath up in Minneapolis for our first Sprouts.

Well, I want to close this out by just asking you a little bit.

You mentioned you're here having a lot of meetings with brands, especially with, I think, the purpose that you just put forward about the type of brands that you're going to carry on your store is in your stores.

What do you look for in these conversations here?

And what, what do you like to do here while you're at fmi?

What's really important to get accomplished?

For me, it's important to meet executive leaders, you know, in each, in each of the business meetings I meet with and understand how we prioritize them and how they prioritize us.

Yeah, it's super important that we're in lockstep on innovation.

And as they come to market, we want to be the, we want to be the company that they think of first to innovate and bring new items to market.

And then I've had a lot of conversations about supply chain, quite frankly, and making sure that we can get a disproportionate amount of the type of goods a lot of people carry.

The items we carry because they have to check a box and they want to chase our customer where we're very intentional and we carry these items because your customers want them and they want to turn them.

So very focused on the supply chain conversation between our distributors, between our manufacturers and our company.

And how can we collectively get together and work better together to really just show up better for our customers and have more in stock availability on a day in and day out basis.

How many FMIs is this for you?

Just my second.

Second.

Okay, nice.

Yeah, it's our second.

Congratulations.

Yeah, thanks.

Here's to getting invited back a second time.

Right.

Who knows about the third?

After people see this, we'll get.

Might not be allowed back for the next year.

Next year.

Well, thank you, man.

Thanks for joining us, Chris.

Thanks for reaching out and inviting me to hook up with you and meet you at fmi and I've enjoyed meeting you.

Yeah, thank you.

Yes, we do.

We love Sprouts.

Like Anne said, we were in the store last February, toured a number of stores with your real estate team and super impressed by the strategy and the leadership from the top down.

And it's emblematic in you being here with us today too.

So we thank you as well.

So again, Stan Swinton of Sprouts.

We'll be here all day from FMI and until next time and be careful out there.