Home Depot announced this week that it’s adding a new class of partners to Pro Xtra, its loyalty program for professional customers. The new offers include a fuel discount at 7-Eleven, a sizable order credit at Jimmy John’s, a discount on Tecovas work boots, and free access to Rosie’s AI Answering Service.
On its face, this is a loyalty program update. Look closer, and it’s a small window into the broader Pro strategy Home Depot has been running.
The New Perks
Here’s what Pro Xtra members can now claim through the Rewards Hub on the Home Depot mobile app or online dashboard:
- 7-Eleven: $0.25 off per gallon of fuel, up to five fills
- Jimmy John’s: $20 off orders over $100
- Tecovas: 20% off work boots
- Rosie’s AI Answering Service: 7-day free trial plus two months free on the Professional or Scale Plan
The offers are available to all Pro Xtra members regardless of spend or tier, and will refresh quarterly. Home Depot said the four categories these partners represent — food and beverage, fuel and fleet, lifestyle and travel, and business management — will anchor the program’s ongoing evolution.
Why It’s Interesting
The specific partners matter less than the categories themselves. What Home Depot is signaling is that “loyalty” no longer just means points on drywall and 2x4s. It means being a platform for a Pro’s whole workday.
Think about the day these perks describe. A contractor pulls into a 7-Eleven to fill up on the way to the first jobsite — that’s the fuel discount. Midway through, the crew stops for lunch — that’s the Jimmy John’s credit. The boots they’re wearing — that’s the Tecovas discount. And back at the office (or the truck), Rosie’s is answering the calls they’re missing while they’re on the ladder.
Home Depot EVP of Pro Mike Rowe framed the design directly: “Our Pro customers live on the go. They are managing crews, bouncing between jobsites and working long hours. Two-thirds of our Pro online users leverage The Home Depot app regularly to help manage their business, projects, orders and more, so it only made sense to embed these new partner offers right inside the app to give them a frictionless way to access them.”
The important part of that quote isn’t the perks. It’s “two-thirds of our Pro online users leverage the app regularly.” Home Depot has an active daily-use platform sitting in the pockets of hundreds of thousands of professional customers, and it’s using that platform as a benefits hub. That’s a real strategic asset.
The Bigger Pro Push
This is one more piece of a Pro strategy that’s been building for years. Home Depot has been aggressively expanding into regional pro distribution — through SRS Distribution, GMS Inc., and the rollup of CORCO commercial roofing, Peridot Supply, and other regional operators. The retailer is building pro market share on the distribution side and locking in pro customer loyalty on the retail side. Both sides of the play point in the same direction.
The broader industry context matters here too. At Lowe’s, Marvin Ellison said last month that Pro penetration is “approaching 40%,” up from 18% in 2018. Every major player in home improvement — chains, cooperatives, and independents — is doubling down on serving the professional contractor. The customer segment has become the industry’s most-contested prize.
What It Means
For hardware and home improvement retailers across the industry, the Pro Xtra expansion is worth watching for a few reasons. A few angles:
- The loyalty bar is rising — and expanding. Pro-focused loyalty programs used to be transactional: spend X, get Y percent back on hardware. That’s still the core. But Home Depot is showing that the surrounding benefits — fuel discounts, food credits, business tools — matter to a Pro customer whose margins are tight and whose day is long. Programs that don’t add up to real dollars saved off the jobsite are competing with ones that do.
- The app is the platform. Two-thirds of Home Depot’s online Pro customers use the app regularly. That’s the kind of engagement co-op-based independents can approximate through their own loyalty programs (Ace Rewards Pro, True Value’s programs, Do It Best’s tools) but which requires ongoing investment in the digital experience. The retailers who make the app or portal genuinely useful win the daily-use battleground.
- Pro-focused partnerships are a strategic lever. Home Depot isn’t building fuel stations or making boots — it’s partnering with the businesses Pros already spend money at. That model is available to any retailer with the reach to negotiate partner deals. Cooperatives with national footprints have particular leverage here, and independents can partner locally (a fuel discount at the truck stop across town, a lunch deal at the diner next door) for the same effect at a smaller scale.
- The Pro customer expects more. The four categories Home Depot named — food, fuel, lifestyle, business management — are the categories a Pro customer’s day actually runs on. A retailer serious about the Pro segment should be thinking about all four, not just the aisle.
The Bigger Picture
The retailers who win the Pro customer over the next several years won’t be the ones with the deepest inventory. They’ll be the ones who make the Pro’s whole workday easier — from the fuel stop at 6 a.m. to the invoicing at 8 p.m.
Home Depot’s Pro Xtra expansion is a clear statement of that thesis. And it’s a reminder that in this stretch of the industry, the retailer-customer relationship is being redefined at every level, not just at the checkout.
Source: The Home Depot, July 2026.
