The Sprouts Farmers Market supermarket chain is opening a new kind of store in North Texas: It's a smaller-format store concept, and will appear in four cities across the U.S., including Grand Prairie. The others are in Florida, Georgia, and Arizona.

The Grand Prairie store will be located at Pioneer Parkway and Carrier Parkway; many parkways in Grand Prairie. This new store model is about 25,000 square feet — 20 percent smaller than the chain's average store size of 28,000-30,000 square feet.

Sprouts is also opening a store in Las Colinas, but that one will be regular size, at MacArthur Boulevard and Las Colinas Boulevard; many boulevards in Las Colinas.

Both stores are slated to open in 2021.

The decision to downsize some new stores is partially a response to COVID-19, but also to keep the focus on what Sprouts does well, according to Sprouts Chief Format Officer Dave McGlinchey.

"This year, Sprouts will densify its footprint with more stores opening in California, Florida, and Texas,” McGlinchey says in a statement. "We're excited to introduce our newest format in four stores and plan to feature this format with even more stores next year, when we will be expanding at unit growth of 10 percent or more."

"The smaller size is very efficient and keeps produce at the heart of the store while maintaining our familiar open layout that will offer more assortment of products for a treasure hunt shopping experience," McGlinchey says.

"Our refreshed format highlights the unique experience Sprouts is known for while emphasizing product innovation, attributes, and departments meaningful to our target customers like high-quality meat and seafood, frozen items, and plant-based products," he says.

In 2020, Sprouts Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer Denise Paulonis told Winsight, a grocery site, that the company "realized our box was just becoming too big and too expensive to build to maintain the economics we had historically."

They'll work to retain their original farmers market feel, with smaller square footage but no less categories; maybe just fewer items in each category.

Other improvements inspired by COVID-19 include a greater emphasis on healthy products including vitamins and supplements, as well as a significant increase in plant-based, keto-friendly and vegetarian frozen foods.

Sprouts currently operates 362 stores in 23 states. The grocer will open approximately 20 stores in 2021.