Is Sprouts Farmers Market Expanding into East El Paso Next Year?

After Whole Foods confirmed company plans to enter El Paso, many social media users expressed discontent on it being built on the west side. Comments such as, “[the] west side already has Sprouts. We need this on the East side,” and “hopefully Sprouts moves to the east side” littered media Facebook pages, including ours.

But one particular comment about Sprouts caught my eye. The person who posted wrote that she had a conversation with a manager of the west side Sprouts Farmers Market who had informed her of company plans to expand to the east side. After bringing this up on the air, we received several calls corroborating what we’d read, including one listener who claimed it will be located in the El Mercado Plaza on Joe Battle next to JC Penney.

So is there any truth to that or is it just hopeful speculation? I reached out to the company for confirmation and received the following reply from spokesperson Donna Egan:

We have not made any announcements about a second El Paso Sprouts store, but we are aware of great interest on the east side of town and will continue to evaluate the market.”

It wasn't a flat out denial, but her reply coupled with the Phoenix based company's most recent expansion plans not showing an El Paso location on its coming in early 2015 list cast enough doubt on the street talk to lead me to dig deeper. With a little more investigating, I found out the location on Joe Battle is actually going to be a Conn's Home Plus.

Sprouts currently operates one store in El Paso at 655 Sunland Park Drive. Like Whole Foods Market, Sprouts Farmers Market offers fresh, natural and organic foods.