H-E-B Bringing Restaurant Meals In-Store

H-E-B is looking to help the hurting restaurant industry and tap pent-up demand for foodservice with an innovative new program.

The Texas-based grocery chain has teamed up with local restaurants to prepare meals-to-go for its Meal Simple program of chef-inspired grab-and-go meals.

Three restaurants in each city will prepare dishes for a limited number of stores as an effort by H-E-B to pump money into beloved Texas restaurants struggling to stay alive during the coronavirus pandemic which has devastated the state’s restaurant industry, according to the Houston Chronicle.

“This is all about the restaurants. They need our help now,” Kevin Blessing, H-E-B group vice president of bakery, deli, restaurants and prepared meals, told the Chronicle. “We hope our customers look at it as a way to help the restaurant community. There’s a value there. I hope that’s what they see.”

The participating Houston restaurants will prepare and deliver the meals to a limited number of H-E-B stores in Houston (the exact locations for each restaurant were not entirely finalized Thursday morning). The restaurants will set the price for each meal and H-E-B will pay them for what is prepared. H-E-B will not take any portion of the sales; it will go directly to the restaurants.

The H-E-B program seems to be the first such program between a large grocery chain and local restaurants amid the COVID-19 outbreak.