SproutsCon highlights: Growing together with The Orchard

The Walt Disney World Resort is known for its magic, and during SproutsCon, the location’s magic extended to Sprouts Farmers Market and its employees. 

From September 19 to 22, Sprouts hosted its annual conference, bringing together store and department managers for a lively and interactive event that was all about growth. The Axonify team was on hand to provide support and enablement, ensuring that Sprouts’ managers left the event feeling confident in their ability to drive learning forward with The Orchard.

The Orchard takes root at Sprouts

With over 30,000 employees, Sprouts has been growing fast—and its investment in training reflects its commitment to empowering its workforce. Since the launch of its learning platform, aptly titled The Orchard, employee participation has skyrocketed, with an impressive 94% of workers engaging with the platform and completing an average of 10.8 training sessions in just six weeks. 

Managers at SproutsCon shared how this training is already making a difference on the store floor, with one manager sharing a story about an employee who applied what they had learned that same day.

These results didn’t go unnoticed. As one Sprouts leader mentioned, the platform’s early success was already opening up conversations on how The Orchard could help improve specific business metrics down the road.

A lively event full of learning

At The Orchard booth, store managers engaged in a raffle contest where they had to submit their participation and frequency numbers. To everyone’s surprise, many knew these stats off the top of their heads—showing just how ingrained The Orchard had become in their daily routines.

Sprouts’ L&D Director even donned an apple costume to drum up excitement around The Orchard booth, adding a playful energy to the event. The whole weekend buzzed with enthusiasm, from conversations about training to the store leaders’ natural competitiveness—managers were keen to know if their team was outperforming other departments when it came to training engagement.

Engagement and commitment from all levels

Beyond the fun, SproutsCon demonstrated something deeper: commitment from the entire organization. Executives, including the CEO and CFO, personally stopped by The Orchard booth to show their support and reinforce the company-wide effort to make learning a priority. 

As a member of the Axonify team, I don’t know of any companies of that size with  94% participation and a record completion rate in just 6 weeks. It’s an engagement success story and shows that when you’re all in, the results follow. 

This level of leadership buy-in has played a huge role in the rapid adoption of The Orchard and is one of the key reasons behind the impressive participation stats.

Seeing how invested both managers and associates were in using the platform, it was clear that Sprouts had taken a comprehensive approach to making The Orchard part of the company’s growth strategy.

Looking ahead

SproutsCon gave everyone a peek into the future of training at Sprouts. As the company continues to expand, the early feedback from The Orchard suggests that this is just the beginning. Store leaders left the event with a renewed focus on how they could use training to strengthen their teams, improve performance and foster continued growth in their stores.

These early results validate everything Axonify stands for—a solution built to engage and support frontline teams to drive real business impact. 

SproutsCon may have wrapped, but the learning journey for Sprouts employees is just beginning—and it’s already looking fruitful.