Sprouts, Natural Grocers see visits increase to start 2025
Two natural and organic chains are outpacing the grocery sector at large when it comes to increased store visits.
For the first quarter of 2025, Sprouts Farmers Market increased its visits 11.9% year-over-year, while visits to Natural Grocers rose 5.9%, according to new data from retail traffic firm Placer.ai. Overall, the grocery category saw a 0.8% increase in visits to start the year, signaling that consumers are after healthy, better-for-you options.
Placer.ai noted that Phoenix-based Sprouts’ expanding footprint helped boost its traffic numbers. Last year, the grocer opened 33 stores. For the first quarter of this year, the average number of visits to each Sprouts location increased 4.2% year-over-year.
While Colorado-based Natural Grocers’ footprint is much smaller (approximately 170 stores compared to Sprouts’ approximately 450), Placer.ai says its over-performance in gaining visits is a positive sign.
[READ MORE: Sprouts Farmers Market to open at least 35 stores on heels of ‘remarkable’ 2024]
Both Sprouts and Natural Grocers attract relatively affluent visitor bases. In the first quarter of 2025, visitors to Sprouts came from areas with a median household income (HHI) of $96.8K, considerably above the category average of $81.8K. Natural Grocers, meanwhile, drew visitors with a median HHI of $84.0K, lower than that of Sprouts, but still higher than the wider segment.
“The chains drew higher-than-average shares of both young professionals and a variety of affluent family segments, though Sprouts was more popular among wealthy families, while Natural Grocers attracted more upper-middle-class suburban families,” wrote Placer.ai content writer Bracha Arnold. “In a grocery market defined by trading down and intensified competition from low-cost outlets such as dollar stores and superstores, specialty chains like Sprouts and Natural Grocers may benefit from their ability to attract health-focused, higher-income shoppers and busy professionals.”
Despite serving similar customers, both grocery chains occupy a distinct geographic niche. In the first quarter of 2025, 49.3% of visitors to Sprouts came from the “Suburban Periphery” – defined by the Placer.ai Esri: Tapestry Segmentation dataset as “commuter-oriented suburbs with access to major cities and their amenities.” Natural Grocers, meanwhile, drew just 39.9% from these areas, just slightly above the sector-wide average. Natural Grocers drew a much larger share of shoppers from “Metro Cities” – defined as “smaller metropolitan or satellite city areas” – than either Sprouts or the wider grocery category.
“This variance suggests that the two health-centric grocers play complementary roles within the food shopping space, allowing both to maximize relevance among their respective customer bases,” added Arnold.
