Sprouts Farmers Market to open bulk grocery store in East Memphis

A new Sprouts Farmer’s Market is on the way to East Memphis as the healthy grocery store chain expands its Memphis-area footprint to three stores. Major renovations are in full swing on the 30,000-square-foot building at the corner of Poplar Avenue and Perkins Extended, and if all goes well a projected completion date is expected in mid-June.

The site, which has sat dormant for several years, was most recently a Kroger grocery store and a Seessel’s grocery store before then.

Phoenix-based Sprouts offers natural and organic foods, including fresh produce, bulk foods, vitamins and supplements, packaged groceries, meat and seafood, deli, baked goods, dairy products, frozen foods, natural body care and household items catering to its customers’ growing interest in health and wellness.

The new Memphis store will be Sprouts’ second on Poplar Avenue. The other is within The Shops of Forest Hill in Germantown, and the company also operates a store in Lakeland.

“We took the building back to just a shell, and we even cut out all of the interior concrete floor,” said Tyler Waldrip, project manager with Oklahoma City-based L5 Construction, the general contractor. “The reason we removed all of the floor on the inside is because we are pouring it back with a special colored concrete to try to simulate a dirt floor since it’s a Farmer’s Market.”

L5, which won the contract to build the new Sprouts here in Memphis based on its previous work building a Sprouts in Oklahoma City, hired a team of local construction workers to do the work here.

“We also cut out some of the asphalt of the parking lot, and we will bring the concrete out from the building to give it a better look,” said Waldrip. “I know we’re going to have to resurface the entire parking lot.”

The company employs more than 24,000 people and operates more than 255 stores in 14 states. During 2016, Sprouts opened 36 new stores, and the company plans to open approximately 32 new locations this year.