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H-E-B Is Offering Deliveries With No Fees Required. But There's a Catch

Originally posted on Men's Journal | By Kristyn Burtt | Last updated Jun 23, 2025 5:25 PM ET

The future has officially arrived for one Texas-based grocery chain as it wheels out a new delivery option.

H-E-B shoppers in Austin, TX can now order food and toiletries and have them delivered by a cute little robot for a small 10-item order, according to The Houston Chronicle. There's an added savings bonus for customers, too. If they used a promotional code, there will be no delivery fee and of course, no tip is needed for a robot.

Currently, the service is only offered in the Mueller neighborhood of the city and has a service radius of one mile from the H-E-B location. Avride, a local Austin technology company, is the provider of the delivery robots. They unveiled the couriers in May 2024 for restaurants in the Mueller area, per KXAN.

An autonomous delivery robot travels on a sidewalk during a demonstration at a 7-Eleven convenient store in Hachioji, Tokyo Metropolis, Japan, on Thursday, May 15, 2025.Bloomberg/Getty Images

“They can detect other objects, pedestrians, bicycles, cars, assess their speeds, distances to them, and plan their route accordingly,” Avride’s head of communications Yulia Shveyko told the news outlet. “Robots are technically not pedestrians, so they have to give right away to all other kinds of traffic they meet other these are pedestrians, bicycles, motorbikes or cars.”

Some of the benefits for small businesses to use the food delivery robots include the ability to reduce labor costs, increase efficiency, and allow for contactless delivery, which is often a preference among users, according to Reeman Robot in November 2023. It wouldn't be surprising to see other industries embracing the delivery robot beyond restaurants, grocery chains, and Amazon.

The Austin restaurants using Avride technology also rave about the robots.

"When we need to deliver the order, we simply press a button, place it in there, and then they’re off. It is seamless," Ashely Eric, owner of Colleen's Kitchen in Austin told KXAN. “Deliveries have really increased. We cannot as a small business, afford to have staff and insurance to do our own deliveries, and utilizing the robots is wonderful. It is more profitable.”

This article first appeared on Men's Journal and was syndicated with permission.

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