Company : Brookshire Grocery Company
Program category : 2021 Food

Origins:

Wood T. Brookshire founded Brookshire Grocery Co. in 1928 and believed his calling was to serve humanity through the grocery business. Ninety-three years later, Brookshire Grocery Co., now in its third and fourth generations of family leadership, continues our founder’s legacy through a strong commitment to volunteerism, philanthropic giving and support of causes that promote hunger relief, education, family health and well-being, active-duty military, veterans, and first-responders in more than 150 communities that support our almost 200 stores. BGC continues to be inspired by our founding core values that include remarkable service and doing the right thing. In addition to annual programs such as our Spirit of Christmas Food Drive, BGC helps address unexpected hunger-relief needs. As examples, to help address food insecurity resulting from the pandemic, the company committed $1,000,000 to local food banks and matched another $100,000 in customer donations. We dispatched our Community Kitchen to feed medical workers and to provide free hot meals for residents affected by massive hurricanes. We give away free water to residents during times of need, such as when Winter Storm Uri caused severe outages earlier this year and following hurricanes or tornados. Our Spring Market banner was created specifically to serve residents in rural areas. BGC launched the banner in July 2016 after acquiring and converting 25 former Walmart Express stores that had been shuttered since January of that year.

Contribution:

During the pandemic, BGC committed $1,000,000 to community food banks and matched an additional $100,000 in customer donations. Our annual Spirit of Christmas Food Drive, now in it’s 40th year, provides one week of meals to approximately 18,000 households each year. Employee-partners in our retail stores prepare and display pre-made bags of high-demand items, such as canned meat, peanut butter, dried beans, bagged rice, flour and sugar. Customers purchase the bags, priced at $10, and donate them to our food drive. BGC partners with local food banks and service organizations to distribute the food to high-risk residents in need of hunger relief, with special focus on elderly residents living alone and households with young children. All food collected in a community stays within that community. In addition, our partnership with Hormel provides approximately $100,000 in protein donations to community food banks each year.

Objectives:

The objective of Brookshire Grocery Company’s support of hunger relief is to help people in need and to make the communities where our 16,700 employee-partners live and raise their families better and stronger for all of us. The objective of our legacy Spirit of Christmas Food Drive, now in its 40th year, is to help people in 18,000 households by providing meals for the entire week of Christmas through New Year’s, a time when people with food insecurities are historically more at risk. Tyler-based Brookshire's Grocery is donating $1 million to food banks across Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas, along with matching customers’ donations up to $500,000 with the goal to help thousands of people at risk of infection from the COVID-19 virus. The $1 million donation to foodbanks last year was distributed across BGC’s market area including the East Texas Food Bank, Food Bank of Northwest Louisiana, FoodNet Food Bank (Louisiana), Northeast Louisiana Foodbank, and Harvest Regional Food Bank (Texarkana) over the next two years. Through May 5, 2020, all Brookshire’s, Super 1 Foods, Spring Market and FRESH by Brookshire’s stores had $1, $3, and $5 scan coupons available for customers to make monetary donations at checkout. Customer contributions and BGC’s match were donated to a local food bank in each community.

Impact:

Brookshire Grocery Co. began sponsoring the Spirit of Christmas Food Drive in 1982 in partnership with the Rose City Kiwanis Club in Tyler, Texas. It is the support and generosity of our customers, combined with the care and compassion of our 16,700 employee-partners and partnership with local relief agencies, that make our Spirit of Christmas Food Drive and other hunger relief efforts so successful. With 185 stores in more than 150 communities in Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana, BGC’s Spirit of Christmas Food Drive now provides about 500,000 pounds of food to people in need throughout the company’s market areas each year. BGC's $1 million donation and the additional $100,000 through the customer match program provided more than 16 million meals for families in East Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas.

Quote:

“Our company is committed to supporting hunger relief in the communities we serve. We care about our communities and are committed to doing what we can to lessen the impact of COVID-19 and other hardships. We know people are in need during the holidays and that our local food banks are seeing increased demand for resources in all of the communities we serve. With the generous support of our customers and local service organizations, we hope to assist 18,000 households by partnering with our customers and local relief organizations.” – Brad Brookshire, Chairman and CEO.

I wanted to take the time to write and commend all of your partners for your service to this community and region. For a year now, through a pandemic and now through an unprecedented winter storm, the Brookshires stores and Super l stores have not only stayed open, but gone above and beyond to serve their customers. It's been heartwarming and also humbling to read on social media of the sacrifices store managers and their hard-working employees have made to keep stores open and running. Stories about helping their associates and customers out of snowdrifts, bringing food to others, giving away water to people without any - these are the actions of a caring and loving community and demonstrate what corporate stewardship and service can look like. So to your warehouse workers, your truck drivers, your cleaning crews ( especially since the coronavirus began), your inventory specialists keeping stock on the shelves, your checkers, your produce/meat/dairy/bakery/deli associates, your pharmacy professionals, your managers, your administrative assistants, your corporate office associates and anyone else I have inadvertently missed- THANK YOU. We are long-time customers at your Super 1 store on Troup Highway (Tyler, Texas), and will continue to support them with gratitude for their positive, courteous, and exceptional service.

Support Statement:

I wanted to take the time to write and commend all of your partners for your service to this community and region. For a year now, through a pandemic and now through an unprecedented winter storm, the Brookshires stores and Super l stores have not only stayed open, but gone above and beyond to serve their customers. It's been heartwarming and also humbling to read on social media of the sacrifices store managers and their hard-working employees have made to keep stores open and running. Stories about helping their associates and customers out of snowdrifts, bringing food to others, giving away water to people without any - these are the actions of a caring and loving community and demonstrate what corporate stewardship and service can look like. So to your warehouse workers, your truck drivers, your cleaning crews ( especially since the coronavirus began), your inventory specialists keeping stock on the shelves, your checkers, your produce/meat/dairy/bakery/deli associates, your pharmacy professionals, your managers, your administrative assistants, your corporate office associates and anyone else I have inadvertently missed- THANK YOU. We are long-time customers at your Super 1 store on Troup Highway (Tyler, Texas), and will continue to support them with gratitude for their positive, courteous, and exceptional service.