Texans Love H-E-B, but Consumer Reports Members Ranked Other Chains Higher

Ask a Texan where to buy the best groceries, and you’ll probably hear H-E-B.

Consumer Reports asked its members to grade their stores, though, and the top score went elsewhere.

Here’s which store came out on top, and where H-E-B landed.

How Consumer Reports Ran the Numbers

This wasn’t a random poll.

Consumer Reports asked its own members about their shopping trips.

Some 75,065 Consumer Reports members rated 96 grocery chains. They weighed in on everything from freshness to checkout speed.

One thing to know: the trips they rated ran from July 2017 through September 2018.

So the results show that stretch of time, not this week’s shelves.

Each store got one overall score out of 100. That one number blends 13 categories.

Consumer Reports also scored online grocery delivery on its own. Shipt came out on top there at 79.

Walmart Supercenter landed among the lowest scores in the same survey. So did Acme and Tops Friendly Markets.

Being big didn’t win members over.

Here are the chains that scored highest, starting with the top mark.

1. Central Market

Central Market got the highest score of any chain in Consumer Reports’ survey: 91 out of 100.

There’s a catch.

H-E-B opened Central Market in Austin in 1994 as an upscale sister brand.

It still owns it today.

So the top score belongs to an H-E-B store that skips the H-E-B name on the sign.

Central Market is known for imported cheese, specialty wine and made-to-order prepared foods.

A regular H-E-B doesn’t carry those kinds of departments.

It runs fewer than a dozen stores, in cities that include Austin, San Antonio, Dallas and Houston.

Same company, different sign.

2. Wegmans Food Markets

Set Central Market aside as an H-E-B store.

Then Wegmans Food Markets has the highest score of any independently owned chain, a 90 out of 100.

Wegmans is family-owned and based far from Texas, in Rochester, New York.

Brothers Walter and John Wegman sold produce from pushcarts before they opened their first store.

The Wegman family has run the chain since 1916.

No relation to Texas or to H-E-B at all.

3. Heinen’s

Heinen’s had the third-highest score in the survey: 89 out of 100.

It’s family-owned too, with stores mostly in Ohio and the Chicago suburbs.

Joseph Heinen, a German immigrant, opened the first store in the Shaker Heights area of Cleveland in 1929.

His family still runs the company today, now in its third and fourth generations.

Heinen’s has grown to 23 stores, split between Northeast Ohio and the Chicago suburbs.

4. Gelson’s, Market Basket, and Trader Joe’s

Gelson’s Markets, Market Basket and Trader Joe’s tied for the fourth-highest score, each at 87 out of 100.

Gelson’s serves Southern California, and Market Basket serves New England. Neither one crosses paths with H-E-B.

Gelson’s scored among the lowest of any chain on price alone. It still made the top tier overall.

Trader Joe’s stands apart from the other two. Consumer Reports named it the top-scoring chain that operates nationwide.

That means more than one region or state.

Joe Coulombe started Trader Joe’s in 1967, out of a handful of Pronto convenience stores in Pasadena, California.

Aldi bought the chain in 1979.

Three different chains, one shared score.

Where H-E-B Wins

H-E-B tops other big grocery rankings. It just doesn’t show up among Consumer Reports’ top scorers.

Today H-E-B runs hundreds of stores under its regular name. They are across Texas and into northern Mexico.

Central Market is separate.

Grocery data firm dunnhumby’s Retailer Preference Index has ranked H-E-B the No. 1 grocer in the country four years in a row.

That report covers 81 of the largest retailers in the U.S.

H-E-B also tied for the top customer-satisfaction score among grocers in the American Customer Satisfaction Index’s 2024 survey.

It shared the top spot with Costco and Publix at 85 out of 100.

That didn’t last.

In the index’s 2026 report, H-E-B fell to third, behind Trader Joe’s and Publix.

Its score was 83.

The industry average was 78 in that report, down slightly from 79 the year before.

Consumer Reports’ is the one major scorecard where H-E-B misses the top tier.

The Woman Who Started H-E-B

H-E-B's whole Texas grocery empire started with one corner store. Florence Thornton Butt opened it in Kerrville in 1905.

She started it with a $60 loan and called it Mrs. C. C. Butt's Staple and Fancy Grocery.

Sixty dollars, total.

The store grew across the state for decades.

By 1995 it had reached 224 locations, every one of them still inside Texas.