Sprouts Farmers Market — Attraction in La Quinta

Pros: Great fresh salads, fruits, sushi, water, and some skin care products. Store is neat, clean, and accessible. Packed my children's lunch with healthy food. Sushi is freshly made and on sale Wednesdays.

Cons: If you're Black you may to consider the following while shopping here. I Was shopping with my children on Wed. As you can see by the pictures I came early and the store was not crowded at all. I walked up to get sushi and out of nowhere a lady comes up behind me and exclaims "can you move and let me get sushi?" I expressed that i was getting sushi which should've been obvious since I had it in my hand. She then went on to exclaim "well I need to be at work". I expressed to her in a very calm manner that I as well had to be at work, my children standing next to me had to be at school, and that I was not conceding my space. She reaches around my body and grabs her sushi, makes a rude noise, and becomes hostile. My children are shocked and upset. I discuss with them that our time and space are just as valuable as anyone else's and proceed to the checkout. The lady is shopping around as if she had no urgency as she stated.

We get to the self checkout and the checker on duty walks up to me and mentions the bags are free since I'm using EBT. Not once did I display or indicate my use of food stamps 🤔 HARD STOP!

My 10 year old son turns to me and asks me, Mommy what's EBT? I told him I'd have to explain outside of the store. After ringing up my items, I again was approached by the checker about the bags being free with foodstamps at which point I told her even if I'm paying with cash as I pulled out a hundred dollar bill. No apologies for her assumptions. My children were totally humiliated about the treatment I received while trying to buy food. I had to spend 20 mins explaining to them on their way to class how the United States Department of Agriculture has a food program for persons who are poor or indignant so they don't go hungry.

TOTALLY...

Subject: Poor Service and Miscommunication – Sprouts La Quinta

To Whom It May Concern,

I’m writing to share my frustration with the experience I had today at your La Quinta, CA location. I came in specifically to purchase roasted chickens and was told they would be ready in 30 minutes. I waited a full hour—twice the promised time—only to be met with poor service and a complete lack of communication.

What made the situation worse was watching two staff members, a young man and an overweight woman, linger behind the counter with no sense of urgency. They appeared to be deliberately dragging their feet, smiling and chatting instead of getting food out or helping customers. It felt dismissive and unprofessional.

After waiting patiently, I asked to speak to a manager. The manager, a woman, was friendly but delegated the issue to an assistant who didn’t take the situation seriously. Instead of investigating the delay or providing any update, the assistant stood around chatting with the same staff members. I proceeded to check out, and we even made eye contact multiple times, yet he never approached me or offered any explanation. When I returned to ask again, he claimed he hadn’t seen me—even though he clearly had.

This might sound minor, but it wasted an hour of my time—time I needed to prepare for a family trip. If I had simply been told upfront that it would take longer, I would’ve gone to another store and avoided this entirely. Instead, I left without what I needed and with a deep sense of frustration.

Because of this experience, we’ve decided not to return to the Sprouts in La Quinta. I hope this situation is taken seriously, as it reflects poorly on the standards your brand...

I was going to let this go, even took a nap on it, but I still feel wronged. My wife and I shop at Sprouts often. Today we were purchasing some produce, which rang at $0.05 and we were like “This can’t be right.” Since we are honest, we notified a checkout attendant by self-checkout. She tried to help, also getting the $0.05 scan, she stated “It must be on sale.” So I was like, “Screw it, this is a good sale, let’s get two more items.” We were honest and out honesty paid off! Well, no. The attendant went out of her way to drum up a different price, come back to our cart and price change the items to $2.93 each. Now these items were supposed to be charged by the pound, but she only scanned a single item, three times, and updated the price to $2.93 each. My wife even asked about all of the other people who didn’t speak up and are getting the item for five cents, to which the young woman replied “I dunno.” Our fifteen cent purchase just became nine dollars. So now, we are bamboozled and confused. We didn’t even want three of these items in the first place. It seems petty to complain about the price of three squash. So we just bag the rest of our food and get ready to go. The whole event didn’t sink in until she gaslit us by saying “Well, you still got a good deal.” Ummm, no. We were tricked into thinking we were getting a good deal, buying two additional items that you then jacked up to an increase of about $8.75. We left, and felt cheated. Do you go back to the store and argue over eight bucks? Nahh that seems like a waste of time and energy. Nonetheless, here I am, hours later, still feeling cheated...