Owners pleased with success of Utah Farmers Market stores

OREM — Sunflower Farmers Market, a natural and organic grocery store, has established two of its newest locations in Utah over the past few months and the company says the results have been great.

The Colorado-based chain opened its first Utah store in Murray in July and weeks ago it established a presence in Utah County with the opening of a store in Orem. These two locations brought the company total to 17 throughout the West, with eight more opening soon.

"We thought that residents of Utah would be very interested in our overall concept," said Bennett Bertoli, a vice president at Sunflower Farmers Market. "There is nobody like us and the results have been very favorable so far."

Bertoli says the pricing and the quality of produce is what drives the sales of the company and what has allowed them to grow over the past few years. The company motto touts "Better-than-supermarket quality at better-than-supermarket prices," and people appear to be noticing.

"It's my first time here, but I saw their flier and wanted to stop by," said Salt Lake resident Ben Staller as he fumbled through a crate of cantaloupes outside the store. "It looks like they have good prices and a lot of fresh stuff."

With the stores being fairly new, many visitors are coming for their first time but seem to be happy with what they are seeing.

"The low produce prices brought me here for sure," said Joani Elliott who made the drive to the Orem store from her home in Saratoga Springs. "It is obviously lower priced than everyone else so I had to come and check it out."

The biggest challenge Sunflower has had is getting the word out that although it is a natural and organic store, it is not a health food store. Bertoli says that customers can do all of their shopping at Sunflower.

"We have the same departments that most of the larger grocery store chains have," he said. "We have fresh meat, fish, frozen foods sections, produce, as well as natural living items. It is just in a very different format from other places."

This month, Sunflower will also be selling pink reusable grocery bags for 99 cents at its stores in Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada in support of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Sunflower has a goal of selling 100,000 of the reusable pink bags, with proceeds going to the advancement of breast cancer patient care in each of the Sunflower communities.

"We have devoted a lot of energy getting behind this cause and the bags can be purchased in both of our Utah stores," Bertoli said. "People are going to see a lot of pink."

---

E-mail: ethomas@desnews.com

Recent comments