Local First Arizona, nonprofit champion of independent businesses and inclusive economic development, announced a three-year, $1.5M partnership with Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation to advance a statewide effort to strengthen Arizona’s local food system, expand access to healthy food, and elevate the state’s culinary talent.
The partnership is more than a funding commitment. It is a transformational relationship built on education, collaboration, and systems-level thinking — one that is setting the foundation for truly groundbreaking work in food access across Arizona and, potentially, the nation.
“Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation is a highly unique organization,” said Kimber Lanning, Founder and CEO, Local First Arizona. “It is simultaneously a visionary foundation, bringing leaders together from around the U.S. to rebuild food systems, and a practitioner working shoulder-to-shoulder with grantees to make transformational changes in healthy food access across our country.”
Becoming a multi-year partner of the Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation also means joining an expansive network of Sprouts-funded projects across 26 states, all working to make their local food systems more sustainable and equitable. The Foundation actively facilitates connections across this network, creating opportunities for partners to share best practices, troubleshoot shared challenges, and draw inspiration from what is being accomplished elsewhere in the country.
“Arizona is home for Sprouts. And we know that building a healthier, more resilient food system is complex work that no single organization can do alone,” said Lyndsey Waugh, executive director of Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation. “Local First Arizona has built a powerful network of farmers, chefs, entrepreneurs, and communities united by a shared belief that everyone should have access to healthy food. We are proud to be a partner in this work and to be working alongside other leaders in this effort.”
Local First Arizona currently operates four incubator community kitchens across greater Phoenix, with an additional location set to open in the fall of 2026. The kitchens provide food entrepreneurs with access to affordable, fully licensed commercial kitchen space at roughly one-quarter of the market rate, along with business education, for up to two years. The partnership will bring Sprouts’ culinary team into the kitchens for special programming, giving entrepreneurs direct access to food-industry expertise in packaging, logistics, healthy food concepts, and pathways to market.
Alongside the kitchens, Local First Arizona’s Good Food Boot Camp provides entrepreneurs with training on food costing, menu planning, and business fundamentals. Sprouts will participate in quarterly sessions, offering entrepreneurs direct insight into what it takes to bring a food product to market.
The partnership also targets the upstream food system. Local First Arizona’s Good Food Forum brings together more than 300 food producers annually for a full day of breakout sessions and speakers focused on expanding producers’ capacity to reach restaurant, grocery, farmers market, and value-added product channels. Sprouts will serve as a premier sponsor of the Forum, which will be held in Prescott on August 25.
Over the course of the partnership, Local First Arizona will work to connect participating food entrepreneurs with regional farms through a streamlined local-sourcing system designed to reduce risk for producers and lower costs for buyers over time.
From kids’ Cooking Classes to community gardens and family cooking and meal planning workshops, Local First Arizona’s nutrition programming in low-income communities will also be supported through the partnership.
As the largest locally owned business coalition in the country, Local First Arizona brings both reach and credibility to the partnership. Its website directory — searched thousands of times monthly by Arizonans seeking local options — will spotlight Sprouts as the state’s premier healthy food grocer and will feature local brands carried by Sprouts to underscore the grocer’s commitment to Arizona-grown products.
Sprouts is a premier partner across Local First Arizona’s celebrated culinary event portfolio, which draws tens of thousands of participants across the state each year.
The Devour Culinary Classic, now in its 18th year, is the region’s premier culinary festival featuring more than 150 restaurants, purveyors, and beverage providers over two days and drawing more than 3,500 attendees. The Devour Seven Chefs Dinner, a beloved, sell-out event spotlighting seven chefs who collaborate on a five-course meal paired with Arizona wines, carries a tradition rooted in a landmark James Beard House dinner created by Arizona’s top culinary talent a decade ago. The Devour Summer Chef Series, running May through September, elevates five hometown chefs through monthly dinners with all proceeds returned directly to the participating restaurants.
Sprouts’ involvement in these events reflects a deliberate strategy to integrate its foundation and culinary team into Arizona’s independent restaurant community, spotlighting local talent while reinforcing Sprouts’ identity as a grocer genuinely invested in the state’s food culture.
