Klatch Coffee will soon be serving breakfast, snacks and its own beverages inside Sprouts Farmers Market.
The Rancho Cucamonga-based roaster is partnering with the Phoenix-based supermarket chain to open cafes within five of its more than 60 grocery stores in Southern California.
The first cafe, in Fontana, will celebrate its grand opening Friday, May 24 through Memorial Day, Monday, May 27. The store is at 16964 S. Highland Ave. in the Highland Village shopping center.
Cafes in Redlands, Rancho Cucamonga, Eastvale and Fullerton stores are expected to follow in coming months.
“We’ve always had the philosophy of meeting our customers where they are. The idea of putting a Klatch where you’re grocery shopping, making your life a little bit easier, makes a lot of sense for what we do,” Heather Perry, chief executive officer of the coffee company, said in a phone interview. It was , Mike Perry and Cindy Perry, in 1993.
Klatch already has seven cafes in San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties. The Sprouts partnership will nearly double the list and add a presence in Orange and Riverside counties as well.
To make room for the coffee shops, Klatch is repurposing public seating areas that were available to customers to relax or eat their grab-and-go purchases.
Those rooms tend to be underutilized, according to Steve Lamontagne, vice president of portfolio optimization.
“We want our stores to be as productive as they can,” he said in a separate phone interview.
The cafes are a pilot program that began a year ago in Arizona with a partnership with Press Coffee, also based in Phoenix.
Sprouts set up five Press coffee shops in its home state and went looking for a local partner for five additional coffee shops in Southern California. Lamontagne said that Sprouts was impressed by Klatch’s commitment to direct trade with coffee growers.
Sprouts reached out to Klatch about a year ago, according to Perry, and began stocking its whole bean blends in March.
She said the Sprouts cafes would be staffed by Klatch employees and provide the same experience as its own cafes, with about 90% of the menu.
But Klatch cafes will also have Klatch exclusives, Perry said. During the opening weekend celebration in Fontana, it will be serving a dalgona coffee created for Klatch’s 30th anniversary celebration last fall.
Dalgona, or whipped, coffee is a trendy, Instagram-friendly beverage that comes from Macau or South Korea and is made with coffee, sugar and a hand mixer. The Klatch version is named Smudgepot after heaters once used to avoid frost damage in citrus orchards.
“Oranges and orange groves are a huge part of Southern California culture,” said Perry. “What we did for this drink, we took off on the dalgona trend. We take espresso and cold brew and orange blossom water and orange extract and syrup and put in a nitrous canister and whip it so its super-light and serve it on a base of oat milk. It’s light and refreshing and orangey.”
The first 25 customers to purchase a Smudgepot each day during Memorial Day weekend will get a free Klatch Coffee glass can, and the first 50 customers on Saturday will get a Sprouts reusable shopping bag, the news release said.
Another exclusive will be Berry Ricotta Toast, made with seasonal berries and local honey on artisan bread, according to a news release.
“Sprouts is very local within the communities they operate,” said Lamontagne. “Klatch has been rooted in the communities where they operate for the last 30 years. They take their business very seriously and really, really focus on their customers. It’s really that blend. I can’t stress enough how the partnership comes together and how we make sure that works. We could partner with any of the big coffee companies out there, but that’s not the way Sprouts goes to market.”
Perry had a similar thought.
“We’re treating these just like Klatch cafes. There’s no difference in our minds.”
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