Fresh Moves Fast. Your Supply Chain Should Move Faster.
Scaling to 1,000 stores means your supply chain needs to think as fast as it moves.
Sprouts has opened hundreds of new stores over the last five years while maintaining 99% tracking quality and best-in-class carrier compliance, all without adding a single person to the transportation team. As you push toward 1,000 stores, that foundation becomes your biggest advantage. It’s time to build on it.
Notice: This custom resource center was created exclusively for Sprouts and is not shared with other organizations. All content is intended solely for Sprouts’ internal review. All company names, logos, and trademarks are used solely for identification purposes and do not imply endorsement, partnership, or affiliation.
Ripe for What’s Next: The Friction That Grows With You
Your business is moving fast. The final phase of fresh meat self-distribution is underway, a new Northern California facility is coming online, and new markets are opening across the Northeast and Midwest. However, the processes holding it all together weren’t built for this pace.
Right now, your after-hours team runs second and third shift seven days a week monitoring over 100 loads per night. They’re chasing down carriers and manually filling gaps when loads go dark at 2am. It’s work that keeps the operation running, but it wasn’t designed to scale.
And it doesn’t stop there:
- Your stores find out about late deliveries by email, and by the time they know, the window to act has already closed
- Your meat vendor network moves on trucks you can’t see until they pull into your DC
- Connecting what’s coming in with what’s going out still requires a buyer making calls, a planner checking systems, a supervisor piecing it together mid-shift
When any one of these breaks down, the result is the same: empty shelves and missed sales.
None of this is a sign that something’s broken. It’s what happens when a great operation is ready for its next chapter.
From the Ground Up: Solving Your Biggest Challenges, Starting Today
Every solution below sits on top of the FourKites platform your team already runs. No new infrastructure, no lengthy implementation, no learning curve. Just a smarter operation, built to grow with Sprouts.
Automate Exceptions Solution
Let Tracy Own the Overnight
Your after-hours team runs a tight operation. But as load counts grow and new markets open, the volume of repetitive overnight work grows with it. The same predictable cycle of stale loads, missed pickups, and manual TMS updates, repeating more than 100 times a night.
Tracy, FourKites’ AI Digital Worker, takes that cycle off your team’s plate. She contacts carriers when loads go stale, sends first and second follow-ups without anyone asking, and updates the platform the moment a carrier responds, all within your existing FourKites setup and Mercury Gate integration. Nothing to rebuild, nothing to retrain.
What leading companies like you have achieved:
- A global food shipper saved 2 to 3 hours of manual morning coordination every day, ensuring loaded trailers were picked up as planned and risks were caught before product spoiled
- Church & Dwight saved 25 hours per week on automated track-and-trace responses
- A global CPG company saw Tracy autonomously handle 86 percent of exception communications and drive a 20 percent improvement in shipment tracking quality
- A global food shipper eliminated 200 to 300 emails per person per week
For Sprouts, that looks like:
- 40 to 60 percent reduction in manual coordination time, so your overnight team can focus on the genuine exceptions that actually need a human to solve them
- Carriers are followed up with automatically so your team never has to chase a response or wonder if a load is covered
- The TMS stays current without manual entry, so store ETAs stay accurate and notifications go out on time
Store Intelligence Solution
Field to Shelf, Without the Inbox
Your stores are already watching. They track every notification, email the moment something seems off, and call if they don’t hear back. What they need isn’t more communication, it’s the right information at the right time and a solution already in motion before they see an exception.
Every store gets a live view of every inbound delivery, updated automatically as conditions change. When a delivery is at risk, the store team knows with enough lead time to call a local vendor, adjust the receiving schedule, or alert the right buyer. Status inquiries from store teams are handled automatically, so your transportation team is no longer the relay point for 480-plus locations asking the same question.
What leading companies like you have achieved:
- Kimberly-Clark saw a 90 percent reduction in email volume related to network visibility loads
- Coca-Cola cut customer response times from 90 minutes to seconds, transforming how their team handles where-is-my-truck inquiries
- A Fortune 500 CPG company achieved a 3 to 5 percent improvement in delivery compliance
What this means for Sprouts:
- Stores stop managing deliveries through their inboxes and start managing them in real time
- Buyers get advance warning on at-risk deliveries early enough to source locally, turning potential stockouts into managed shortages
- Your transportation team stops fielding status requests from stores and starts focusing on supply chain strategy
- Predictive insights and AI-led orchestration across Sprouts-controlled, KeHE, and UNFI deliveries in a single view
Supplier Network Solution
See What’s Coming Before It Arrives
Your meat vendor network moves on supplier-managed trucks you can’t see until they pull into your DC. For a business where most of what arrives in the morning ships to stores that same night, that’s a blind spot that gets more expensive every time you open a new market.
The fix is closer than you think. Tyson is already a FourKites customer. Connecting them is a Network Visibility request, not an integration project. Once connected, your buyers and DC teams see inbound meat shipments with enough lead time to act before a disruption reaches your DCs or your shelves.
What leading companies like you have achieved:
- Coca-Cola Consolidated improved warehouse productivity and put supply planners in control by tracking SKU-level details across managed and unmanaged freight
- Land O’Lakes called proactive exception management a genuine breakthrough in real-time visibility
- Tyson uses visibility data to differentiate themselves as a shipper of choice with their carrier base
What this means for Sprouts:
- Early warning on inbound supply disruptions with enough lead time to source locally before stores go short
- Tyson connected via a simple Network Visibility request, no new integration, no supplier behavior change required
- DC teams can plan receiving labor around what’s actually coming, not what they expect
- Directly supports Sprouts’ food waste reduction commitments by catching spoilage-risk delays at the source
The Full Picture Solution
When It All Works Together
When your overnight exceptions are handled before your team gets to their desk, your stores know the moment a delivery is at risk, and your meat vendors are visible before a disruption reaches your DC, the operation runs differently.
That’s what an intelligent supply chain looks like in practice. Every piece connected, inbound shipments, outbound deliveries, supplier networks, store operations, in a single real-time picture. When something goes wrong upstream, your buyers and DC teams see the downstream impact immediately, with enough context to act before it compounds. Your people stop making status calls and start making decisions. That’s how Sprouts scales from 480 to 1,000 stores with the same team.
What leading companies like you have achieved:
- C&S Wholesale Grocers saw a 65 percent reduction in inbound status calls within three months
- A global food shipper saved 2 to 3 hours of manual coordination every day when everything was connected and running autonomously
- Unilever autonomously handled 86 percent of exception communications and reduced expired loads from 15 percent to zero
For Sprouts, that translates into:
- Early enough warning on at-risk deliveries to source locally before stores go short
- CSCO and VP-level leadership gain a real-time operational picture across every store, every DC, every supplier
Proven Results Across Complex Networks
40% to 60%
Reduction in manual coordination time
70%+
Less time processing supplier status updates
65%
Reduction in inbound status calls within 3 months (C&S Wholesale Grocers)
25+ hours
Saved per week on automated track-and-trace responses
Same-day warning
On inbound disruptions with enough lead time to source locally
Ready to Grow Without the Growing Pains?
You’ve built one of the best-run supply chains in specialty grocery. Let’s show you exactly how FourKites’ Digital Workforce takes it further, starting with a working session built around your team, your workflows, and your 2026 priorities.
How Leading Companies Made the Shift
Land O’Lakes: When Stores Stop Calling and Start Planning
Land O’Lakes knows what it means to run a time-sensitive operation. Their customers, farmers and dairy co-ops, operate on the same logic Sprouts does: when a delivery is late, the consequences are immediate and expensive. By giving customers a live link to track their own shipments from the moment the truck departed, Land O’Lakes discovered that the impact went far beyond the operational. Customers started proactively reaching out to say thank you, telling Land O’Lakes the visibility had transformed how they scheduled staff and planned their own deliveries.
The operational results backed up the sentiment, with a 21 percent reduction in median dwell time per load in just three months. The parallel for Sprouts is direct. Your stores are someone else’s downstream customer too. When they know a delivery is running late early enough to adjust receiving schedules, call a local vendor, or alert the right buyer, the whole chain runs better.
“We’re excited to roll this platform out to all our drivers so that we can track 100% of our shipments right from pickup, and therefore be empowered to be more proactive and accurate with customer delivery notifications.”
Carrie Conrad, Transportation Systems Analyst, Land O’Lakes
Dollar Tree: When Stores Call It a Project Done for Them, Not to Them
When Josh Jewett was CIO at Dollar Tree, the company had 29 distribution centers, 16,000 stores, and almost no intelligence on where inbound shipments were or when they would arrive. Store managers couldn’t plan their teams around deliveries they couldn’t see coming. The transportation organization was managing exceptions reactively, and stores were left waiting.
After implementing supply chain visibility with FourKites, store managers gained real-time insight into exactly when their deliveries would arrive, early enough to schedule staff, adjust receiving plans, and stop being caught off guard. The organizational response said everything: store operations described it as a project done for them, not to them. That distinction matters. It’s the difference between technology that creates work and technology that removes it.
“One of the best initiatives we did for our team at Dollar Tree was implementing supply chain visibility. We had 29 distribution centers, 16,000 stores, and very little intelligence on where inbound shipments were, when they would arrive at the DCs, when they would arrive at the stores. By putting in a supply chain visibility solution, we were able to give store managers that critical insight into when they were going to get their deliveries so they could schedule their teams accordingly. After implementation, store operations referred to it as a project done for them, not to them.”
Josh Jewett, Former CIO, Family Dollar and Dollar Tree
Unilever: What Happens When Tracy Runs Exception Management
Unilever’s transportation team faced a challenge familiar to any high-volume shipper: exception management was reactive, manual, and constant. Someone had to identify the problem, monitor it, reach out to the carrier, and follow up if they didn’t hear back, all while managing everything else on their plate. Unilever co-innovated with FourKites to deploy Tracy across four autonomous workflows: route deviation detection, geographic risk alerts, tracking quality recovery, and track and trace automation. Within four weeks, the results were clear. Tracy autonomously handled the majority of exception communications during the pilot. Expired loads dropped significantly. Tracking quality and super-tracked loads improved noticeably, all without adding headcount or changing how the broader team operated.
“Tracy has helped make our supply chain more efficient. Within four weeks, we observed notable improvements to exception management and tracking quality. Tracy provides useful information and streamlines processes by proactively identifying risks, coordinating with carriers, and taking immediate action.”
Shwetha Balagali, Senior Manager Logistics NA, Capabilities and Excellence, Unilever
In Their Own Words
"Within the first three months of FourKites deployment, we saw a 65 percent decrease in inbound calls from customers asking where their truck was. That was because our team really embraced using FourKites first before making that call, and FourKites was able to answer that question for them."
Megan Reilly, Transportation Technology, C&S Wholesale Grocers
"We track our inbound freight very closely, primarily because our stores are able to order the product as soon as the inbound carrier bumps our docks. Getting that visibility allows us to have that product available for ordering right away."
Adrian Santos, Corporate Director of Transportation and Third Party Logistics, Grocery Outlet
"Tracking inbound is going to allow us to move appointments around throughout the day and be very nimble on the warehouse side. It's going to allow us to bring in more loads on certain days where we typically don't, because we don't have that visibility."
Adrian Santos, Corporate Director of Transportation and Third Party Logistics, Grocery Outlet
"By putting in a supply chain visibility solution, we were able to give store managers that critical insight into when they were going to get their deliveries so they could schedule their teams accordingly. After implementation, store operations referred to it as a project done for them, not to them."
Josh Jewett, Former CIO, Family Dollar and Dollar Tree
Trusted by Leaders in Food, Grocery, and Consumer Goods
The Foundation Is There. Let’s Build On It.
Your team has done the hard work to get here. Now it’s time to put the platform to work in ways that match where Sprouts is going: 1,000 stores, new markets, and a supply chain that scales without the manual work scaling with it. Let’s build that together.