Hy-Vee Receives Food Marketing Institute's Community Outreach Award
January 29, 2019 | News & Press Releases
WEST DES MOINES, Iowa (Jan. 29, 2019) — The Food Marketing Institute (FMI) has named Hy-Vee the recipient of its 2018 Community Outreach Award in the Program Addressing Hunger category. The award was announced at the FMI Midwinter Executive Conference this past weekend in Miami, Florida.
Hy-Vee received the award for its response following the destructive tornados that touched down in Marshalltown, Iowa, in July 2018. In response to the disaster, Hy-Vee donated meals, snacks and beverages to impacted residents and emergency workers.
“Community service is such an expected part of the food retailer profile it is easy to take their neighborhood commitment for granted, but each year, the Food Marketing Institute seeks to recognize the oft-overlooked, but numerous unmentioned contributions and gestures of goodwill that grocers make to enhance the communities they serve,” said David Fikes, vice president for communications and community affairs for FMI.
“Food retailers do much more than simply feed families through the food they sell to their customers. Retailers large and small-urban, suburban or rural enrich the lives of their shoppers through thoughtful community programs that often are iconic expressions of the spirit of that particular neighborhood.”
As a result of Hy-Vee’s efforts, more than 20,000 individuals in the Marshalltown area benefited from the food and beverage donations. Hy-Vee distributed 111,000 bottles of water, 31,000 bottles of Gatorade, more than 1,600 cases of dried meat snack products and more than 70,000 snack and protein bars from the Marshalltown Hy-Vee parking lot, as well as from five Hy-Vee Healthy You Mobiles.
The Marshalltown Hy-Vee also worked alongside vendor partner Just BARE® Chicken and partnered with the local food bank, United Way and the Salvation Army, to distribute more than 40,000 pounds of refrigerated chicken to impacted residents in the Marshalltown community in the weeks following the disaster.
FMI chose Hy-Vee for the award based upon store-level, corporate and community participation addressing a community need; breadth and depth of the program; originality and creativity. The Program Addressing Hunger Award is presented to a retailer that is heavily involved in giving back to its communities via food drives, food bank donations and commitments to increase access to fresh food in underserved areas.
This is the second consecutive year that Hy-Vee has received an FMI Community Outreach Award.
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About Hy-Vee, Inc.
Hy-Vee, Inc. is an employee-owned corporation operating more than 245 retail stores across eight Midwestern states with sales of $10 billion annually. The supermarket chain is synonymous with quality, variety, convenience, healthy lifestyles, culinary expertise and superior customer service. Hy-Vee ranks in the Top 10 Most Trusted Brands and has been named one of America’s Top 5 favorite grocery stores. The company’s more than 80,000 employees provide “A Helpful Smile in Every Aisle” to customers every day. For additional information, visit www.hy-vee.com.