New generation leads Jonathan Sprouts to growth
Several varieties of sprouts grow inside a greenhouse at the Johnathan Sprouts farm in Rochester. Photos by Grace Roche
Liz Reilley, owner of Jonathan Sprouts. 
The New Bedford storefront sells skincare products, apparel and of course sprouts. 
An employee prepares a new batch of seeds for sprouting. 
Sprouts are ready to be harvested after about a week. 
One employee prepares packages of sprouts for distribution. 
Reilley displays a photo of her former business partner Rich Wolfe in her office at the farm.
Several varieties of sprouts grow inside a greenhouse at the Johnathan Sprouts farm in Rochester. Photos by Grace Roche
Liz Reilley, owner of Jonathan Sprouts.
The New Bedford storefront sells skincare products, apparel and of course sprouts.
An employee prepares a new batch of seeds for sprouting.
Sprouts are ready to be harvested after about a week.
One employee prepares packages of sprouts for distribution.
Reilley displays a photo of her former business partner Rich Wolfe in her office at the farm.
ROCHESTER — Liz Reilley spent her middle and high school summers packing sprouts for a penny a bag on her family’s Rochester farm.
Fifty years since she started working there, she’s now at the helm of Jonathan Sprouts and continues the family legacy while drawing on her beauty and sales background and leading the company through an expanding product line.
In 2021 she and her business partner Rich Wolfe purchased the company her aunt, Barbara Sanderson, and uncle, Bob Sanderson, founded in 1976. Wolf unexpectedly died early the next year, and Reilley has been the sole owner of the company since then.
She said a family business has a different feel than the companies she’s worked at before. Before coming back to Jonathan Sprouts, Reilley was a national sales manager for apparel retailers Guess and Danskin.
She said there’s more pride, flexibility and camaraderie without corporate bureaucracy.
“Every one of the people who work here feel a level of pride for what they do,” Reilley said. “It also makes us much more nimble — we can see where things go, and we go above and beyond to satisfy customers or to get an order through.”
Her first job was in public relations at Estee Lauder, where she worked for the makeup company’s founder. Years later, she began her own line of beauty products.
While the company’s main location – where the sprouts are grown, harvested and packaged – remains at 384 Vaughan Hill Road, Reilley also runs a retail space in New Bedford. She sells her sprout-infused skincare products, along with sprouts, apparel and other merchandise at the 1 Johnny Cake Hill location.
Reilleysaid sprouts and skincare may seem unrelated, but the lotions, balms and other products she sells are infused with ingredients distilled from her crops.
“To me it makes perfect sense,” she said. “It's all the same, whether you're ingesting it or you're ingesting through your skin — you don't want to put anything on your skin that you wouldn't want to put in your body.”
She described herself as having always been a “skincare person” who loves toiletries and was always experimenting with new products.
About 10 years ago she began experimenting with extracting sulforaphane from broccoli sprouts, a compound that has been linked to anti-inflammatory, anticancerogenic and antidiabetic effects. She partnered with a local herbal chemist to create her skincare line and began offering it to customers.
Since then, the beauty arm of the business has expanded from a previous location at New Bedford’s Kilburn Mill into a new space where Reilley wants to help people embrace a healthy lifestyle.
“We want a place where people can come and learn,” she said. “It's not just eating the sprouts. It's learning how to home grow if you want to do that, and then it's a whole lifestyle.”
Contact Name
