Social K

This summer, Kellogg and Texas-based H-E-B teamed up on an in-store promotion to help raise money for Feeding Texas, the state’s largest hunger relief organization.  

When shoppers spent at least $12 on select Kellogg food items, Kellogg donated $1 to Feeding Texas. We’re proud to announce that we raised $55,000, which Feeding Texas will use for programming. 

Activations like this are part of the Better Days® Promise, Kellogg's commitment to advance sustainable and equitable access to food for 3 billion people by the end of 2030, including helping to feed people facing food insecurity. 

We caught up with Feeding Texas CEO Celia Cole to ask her about her organization and learn how in-store promotions like the one at H-E-B enable Feeding Texas’ work. 

SK: What is Feeding Texas’ hunger relief strategy? 

CC: We play a very distinct role. We’re not out there feeding people and responding during natural disasters, but our role is to generate the resources for the 21 food banks in our network to do that work. 

Our strategic plan has four pillars. One is to drive equitable food access by connecting people to food resources like SNAP and other nutrition programs.  

The second pillar is to mitigate root causes of hunger. What can we do to shorten the line? Our third area of focus is community nutrition. We want to make it easy for people to access healthy, culturally necessary foods. 

And our fourth pillar is responding to food crises. We changed the word from disaster to crises because pandemics qualify like a natural disaster would. 

SK: How does Feeding Texas use the money generated from promotions like the Kellogg/H-E-B partnership? 

CC: The vast majority of our $40M budget is passed through to food banks and almost all of it is from state and federal funds. The team that supports those contracts is paid out of those contacts. 

It’s really vital to have what I call these “cause marketing” programs, like the one at H-E-B. Sometimes we give the funds directly to the food banks. In the case of this H-E-B summer hunger campaign, half of the proceeds go to food banks and half go to Feeding Texas. 

The money from these campaigns plays a significant role in helping support our advocacy and communications to raise awareness of hunger and bring food and fund resources to our network. 

H-E-B introduced us to Kellogg and facilitated this work. We sort of joke that H-E-B is the father of food banking in Texas, but it’s not a joke – they got a lot of food banks off the ground. They’ve been tremendous partners and worked hand-in-hand with us. 

SK: Are there other intangible benefits that come from partnerships like the one with Kellogg and H-E-B? 

It’s hard to quantify, but it’s imperative for our brand to be seen in stores like that. What better way to see it than in grocery stores across the state?  

I think people making the connection between the food they’re buying and eating and Feeding Texas is really important. Everyone wants to feel like they’re giving back.