H-E-B Just Won Best Grocery Retailer, and Celebrated By Giving Their Employees an Awesome Gift

updated Feb 13, 2020
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Beloved Texas-based grocer, H-E-B, was recently named the top grocery retailer in the third annual Dunhumby Retailer Preference Index: Grocery Channel Edition (beating out larger chains like Trader Joe’s, Costco, and more). To celebrate, H-E-B is sort of paying things forward. How so? The Senior Leadership Team gave a $100 bill to every single employee in the company — you know, as a way to show their appreciation for helping the grocer take home top honors and making the store such a winning place to shop.

“It’s H-E-B’s way of saying thank you for all the hard work and passionate service our Partners provide each and every day to our customers and the many communities we serve throughout Texas,” a company rep told our friends at Southern Living.

We just LOVE hearing things like this! Clearly, the store didn’t have to do anything. They could have sent out a memo and called it a day. Or they could have just served up coffee and doughnuts. But nope! Every employee got the money and some locations even celebrated with food trucks, breakfasts, and other little treats. While this kind act is surprising for a grocery store in general, we suppose it’s not that surprising for H-E-B — a company that’s known for doing the right thing.

The company donates five percent of pretax earnings to charity, and gives millions of pounds of groceries to local food banks each year. H-E-B does a lot to support teachers and education, helps with disaster-relief efforts, and more.

A few more reasons we love H-E-B? There’s an in-house tortilleria and, if you visit at the right moment, you can get a warm, soft, fresh-out-of-the-oven free sample. Speaking of free samples, the free samples at H-E-B put Costco to shame. And execs come up with some super smart products including “bare bread” (bread with the crust removed for speedy sandwich making) and “pot-ready pasta” (dried noodles that are already broken in half to fit into a medium-sized pot). And, stop us if we said this already, but the higher-ups just gave every single employee $100 for a job well done!

Have you been to a H-E-B? Would you vote for it as the top grocery store, too?