The Campaign
Harris Teeter has activated its 2026 Harvest Feast Round Up, inviting shoppers at its 250-plus supermarkets to round transactions up to the nearest whole dollar at checkout through Dec. 29. All proceeds flow to 19 local hunger-relief partners distributed across the Kroger-owned banner's eight-state footprint, with each food bank assigned to stores within its own service area.
The 2025 edition of the campaign generated more than $820,000 in customer and associate donations — a figure that underscores the program's scale within a conventional grocery format that competes on community engagement alongside price and assortment. Cumulatively since 2005, Harvest Feast has raised over $14 million in monetary donations for food-insecure households.
Why It Matters for Operators
Checkout round-up programs have become a standard community-investment mechanism across both foodservice and grocery retail, but Harris Teeter's 21-year track record and nine-figure cumulative total position it among the more durable executions in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic markets. For multi-unit operators and banner-level retail chains alike, the model is operationally efficient: no SKU or menu changes, no promotional print runs, and donor acquisition happens at the point of sale rather than through above-the-line spend.
Danna Robinson, director of corporate affairs and customer relations for Harris Teeter, framed the program's appeal in terms of hyper-local accountability. "Every dollar donated at checkout stays local, supporting food bank partners that serve families in the same community where the donation is made," Robinson said. That localization model — store-level alignment with specific partner agencies — also differentiates it from national pooled-fund campaigns, giving franchisees and banner operators a replicable template for neighborhood-level community investment.
Retail Grocery Context
The campaign launches as grocery operators continue to navigate softening consumer sentiment and traffic competition from value-format rivals. Cause-marketing activations that require no customer out-of-pocket commitment beyond rounding up cents per transaction have shown resilience even in price-sensitive trade areas, making them attractive to banners defending basket size. Harris Teeter, with roughly 36,000 associates and more than 60 fuel centers complementing its store network, operates across North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Maryland, Delaware, Florida, and the District of Columbia.
For operators tracking hunger-relief partnerships as part of ESG and community-affairs reporting, Harris Teeter's model — transparent dollar-to-partner traceability and a defined campaign window — offers a benchmark worth monitoring as the holiday foodservice season accelerates through year-end. Coverage of similar retail-community investment programs can be found in our grocery and retail foodservice and community-impact coverage sections.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
