Los Gatos Grocers: 50% of 2025 Retail Sales Went to Local Stores

For retail operators and grocery analysts, Los Gatos is a live case study in whether "local" is a durable merchandising strategy or a seasonal narrative. Summit Store and Whole Foods are managing shelves where regional producers and national brands compete for the same shopper, and the 50% local-store share of 2025 retail sales reported by Capital One suggests consumers are voting with their wallets in ways that could reshape assortment planning.

At Summit Store, Inc. in Los Gatos, the shelf is a real-time poll of what consumers mean when they say they want to buy locally. The independent grocer stocks locally sourced foods from Aptos, Santa Cruz and Monterey alongside commercial brands like Kellogg’s, Nabisco and Coca-Cola, a dual assortment that owner Darrell Osborn frames as community-oriented service. Store manager Ben Abeln puts the operational reality plainly: “Sales is not what I want; it’s what you want. And if you want it and it moves off of the shelf, that’s not my choice, it’s a customer’s choice.” That tension between local sourcing ideals and customer demand underpins the wider retail trend captured in a June 2026 Capital One Bank shopping research report, which found that half of all retail sales in 2025 were made at local stores.

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The independent grocer stocks locally sourced foods from Aptos, Santa Cruz and Monterey alongside commercial brands like Kellogg’s, Nabisco and Coca-Cola, a dual assortment that owner Darrell Osborn frames as community-oriented service.

Los Gatos is not a generic test market: it is an affluent Silicon Valley-adjacent community with pronounced purchasing power and high expectations around food quality and provenance. Whole Foods Market’s Los Gatos location emphasizes local and emerging producers, but local forager Patrick Wyman says the chain continues to carry Siete Foods, Poppi and Justin’s Nut Butters because these brands began locally before becoming national household names. Wyman argues these brands “continue to deliver value to our customers as well as their supply chain,” a signal that locality can be an incubation stage rather than an end state. For retailers, this means the boundary between “local” and “conventional” is blurring: brands can cycle from regional specialty to national distribution, and chains can use local merchandising to manufacture community authenticity.

The local purchasing trend has roots in COVID-19. Forbes reported that many consumers shifted to buying food locally during the pandemic because of supply chain disruptions, labor shortages and demand fluctuations. Unlike many crisis-era behaviors, this one persisted, with half of all retail sales in 2025 taking place at local stores, according to the June 2026 Capital One report. Yet the structural context is difficult. According to a 2024 article by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, the number of independent grocery stores has dropped rapidly since the 1980s as large retailers like Grocery Outlet, Walmart and Kroger dominated the market, leading to food deserts and higher prices.

The Los Gatos story surfaces the unresolved tension in modern retail: even mission-driven grocers find it difficult to avoid carrying conventional products. Consumer expectations for year-round access to produce that cannot be grown locally during certain seasons force retailers to source from outside. Whole Foods and Summit Store both reflect this hybrid strategy—local where possible, national where necessary. This is not a failure of local buying power; rather, it reflects how seasonal calendars, supply chain economics and brand recognition shape actual purchasing decisions, even in a wealthy market with strong community ties.