H-E-B Forney Grand Opening: A Local's Guide to Healthy Shopping
Forney has been waiting for this one.
H-E-B is opening in Forney at The Village at Gateway, the new retail center on US-80 at FM 460. After years of driving to Mesquite, Rockwall, or Royse City for the closest H-E-B, Kaufman County finally gets its own.
If you’re new to H-E-B, or just want to know what’s actually worth your time on grand opening week, here’s the local’s guide.
Why Forney Loves H-E-B Already
If you’ve lived in Texas long enough, you already know. H-E-B isn’t just a grocery store — it’s a category of its own. Texas Monthly’s “best grocery in Texas” almost every year. The Texas-grown produce. The Meal Simple line. The bakery. The tortillas. The brand loyalty here is real, and a brand-new full-format H-E-B in Forney is one of the more meaningful things to happen to the US-80 corridor in a decade.
What to Expect on Grand Opening Day
If past Texas H-E-B grand openings are anything to go by:
- Plan to arrive early or late. The first three to four hours of opening day will be packed. Mid-afternoon and evening tend to be calmer.
- Free samples and giveaways. H-E-B usually goes hard on opening-day promos — sample stations through the store and a few signature giveaways near the front.
- Some shelves will look picked over. This is normal. Restocking happens overnight; come back the next morning if a specific item is out.
- Parking is the real bottleneck. The lot is large, but expect a wait at peak times in the first week.
What to Buy First
A few categories where H-E-B genuinely beats other grocery chains in the area, especially if you’re trying to eat well:
Strictly Lean Ground Beef (96/4). Honest, lean, no fillers. Great for high-protein meal prep and usually well priced.
Meal Simple line. Chef-prepped meals you can heat in 10 minutes. The salmon options and sheet-pan dinners are worth knowing about — way better macros than most takeout.
Central Market salmon and Atlantic salmon portions. Consistently fresher than the warehouse-club options, in our experience.
H-E-B brand Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, and eggs. All cheaper than Walmart equivalents, often higher quality.
Tortillas, especially the Mi Tienda flour tortillas. Made in-store. There’s no comparison.
Texas-grown produce. When in season — peaches, watermelon, onions — H-E-B is consistently the best in the state. Forney summers will be a lot more fun.
H-E-B vs. Costco vs. BJ’s: Where Each One Wins
With Costco fuel already open, BJ’s coming, and H-E-B opening, Forney suddenly has options. A quick mental model:
- H-E-B — fresh produce, fresh fish, prepared meals, bakery, weekly meal planning.
- Costco / BJ’s — bulk meat, frozen, paper products, snacks, supplements.
- Walmart / Kroger — fill-in trips and pantry staples.
For deeper detail on Costco specifically, see our Costco Forney healthy shopping guide. For the full Gateway opening map, see our Village at Gateway guide.
The Fitness Angle
We see two big patterns at TX Fitness when it comes to nutrition:
- People who train hard but eat takeout plateau within a few months.
- People who do a 45-minute Sunday meal prep — protein, carbs, and produce ready to grab — drop body fat and add strength steadily for years.
The friction is almost always time and access to good food. Having an H-E-B in Forney drops the friction enormously. You can lift after work, swing through the store, and have actual food at home in under 90 minutes total.
Train Where You Shop
TX Fitness is at 127 E US Highway 80, Forney, TX 75126, just minutes from the new H-E-B. We’ve been here over 25 years and we’re as excited as anyone that Forney is finally becoming a place where families can do everything in their own zip code.