H-E-B, parent of Central Market, opened the company’s first Fort Worth and Tarrant County H-E-B this morning, at 3451 Heritage Trace Parkway in the fast-growing Alliance corridor.

The store opened at 6 a.m., a day after hosting an invitation-only ribbon-cutting and donating kickoff checks of $10,000 apiece to the CASA of Tarrant County and Humane Society of North Texas nonprofits.

“We were looking at this area over 10 years ago,” Stephen Butt, president of Central Market and host of the ribbon cutting, said in an interview Tuesday. “We landbanked a lot of sites for a number of years all over Dallas-Fort Worth.”

Mattie Parker, Fort Worth’s mayor, helped cut the ribbon.

The popular grocer Is “about supporting Texas families and understanding that, at the heart of Texas is a place where people feel welcome. And H-E-B has done that in spades.”

H-E-B has multiple formats. Besides the flagship grocery stores and Central Market, it also has Joe V’s Smart Shop, a smaller format store that carries a curated selection of fresh products at low prices, and Mi Tienda, a Mexican market.

The company is opening its second Tarrant County flagship later this year in Mansfield.