How H-E-B became Texas' most beloved brand (2024)
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How H-E-B became Texas' most beloved brand (2024)
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Re: How H-E-B became Texas' most beloved brand (2024)
#2> Perhaps the real question isn’t: Why does H-E-B do so many nice things for the state? But: Why aren’t more companies like H-E-B?
> ... in this company’s nearly 120-year history, it’s remained family-owned and operated.
It has been more than a century since the American legal system told publicly-owned companies "Don't Be Good"
Re: How H-E-B became Texas' most beloved brand (2024)
#3> Perhaps the real question isn’t: Why does H-E-B do so many nice things for the state? But: Why aren’t more companies like H-E-B? > ... in this company’s nearly 120-year history, it’s remained family-owned and operated. It has been more than a century since the American legal system told publicly-owned companies "Don't Be Good" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co .
Shareholder primacy is a drain on so many levels. Think of all the R&D that could have been spent instead of buying back shares.
Re: How H-E-B became Texas' most beloved brand (2024)
#4The biggest difference I’ve noticed is HEB has plenty of employees who don’t seem depressed to be there.
When I’ve been to HEB I see plenty of cashier lanes open, each with a cashier and bagger, people stocking aisles, a team behind the butcher and bakery counters, etc.
By comparison, Kroger seems to try and have a skeleton crew at all times. Usually a single cashier, a self checkout supervisor, and a couple of people frantically stocking.
The Kroger employees look over worked and clearly unhappy to be there.
The HEB employees seem generally happy and are usually in groups chatting with coworkers and customers while they work.
Shopping at Kroger feels almost dystopian relative to HEB.
Re: How H-E-B became Texas' most beloved brand (2024)
#5Sigh… They’ll never be able to compete with Kroger’s wide selection of extremely expired food.
(/s)
Re: How H-E-B became Texas' most beloved brand (2024)
#6The biggest difference I’ve noticed is HEB has plenty of employees who don’t seem depressed to be there. When I’ve been to HEB I see plenty of cashier lanes open, each with a cashier and bagger, people stocking aisles, a team behind the butcher and bakery counters, etc. By comparison, Kroger seems to try and have a skeleton crew at all times. Usually a single cashier, a self checkout supervisor, and a couple of peopl…
I've experienced the same thing except sed 's/HEB/Publix/g'
This is probably just a 'Kroger vs nice supermarket' thing.
Re: How H-E-B became Texas' most beloved brand (2024)
#7> Perhaps the real question isn’t: Why does H-E-B do so many nice things for the state? But: Why aren’t more companies like H-E-B? > ... in this company’s nearly 120-year history, it’s remained family-owned and operated. It has been more than a century since the American legal system told publicly-owned companies "Don't Be Good" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co .
> It has been more than a century since the American legal system told publicly-owned companies "Don't Be Good"
The American legal system did no such thing in the Dodge ruling: as stated in the Wikipedia article itself, the 'pay shareholders' idea was in the obiter dictum (non-binding remark) portion.
And as recently as Burwell v Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court said:
> While it is certainly true that a central objective of for-profit corporations is to make money, modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not do so. For-profit corporations, with ownership approval, support a wide variety of charitable causes, and it is not at all uncommon for such corporations to further humanitarian and other altruistic objectives.
* http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/13-354.html
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burwell_v._Hobby_Lobby_Stores,....
Re: How H-E-B became Texas' most beloved brand (2024)
#8The biggest difference I’ve noticed is HEB has plenty of employees who don’t seem depressed to be there. When I’ve been to HEB I see plenty of cashier lanes open, each with a cashier and bagger, people stocking aisles, a team behind the butcher and bakery counters, etc. By comparison, Kroger seems to try and have a skeleton crew at all times. Usually a single cashier, a self checkout supervisor, and a couple of peopl…
Yep. And they don't charge much of a premium to deliver this. I can buy things at HEB and not worry about them being expired/etc, even for grocery pickup. Kroger, afaict, _chooses_ the expiring/broken stuff if you do grocery pickup. Kroger is closer to me so I've given it several chances, but every time they seem to get me in a new way to get me with opened, expired, or damaged stuff, and I won't be bothered to establish a quality control process just to buy some groceries. Meanwhile I've done grocery pickup from HEB for a couple years now and have maybe 3-4 things I've had to request a refund. The whole foods near me is heading down the Kroger route too.
It's literally just doing the core service better than average and allowing it to yield results. "hmmm lets try not scamming people so we can save pennies on some expired bell peppers in a loss leader area to begin with... Perhaps they'll also pick up some prescriptions while they are here! Heck, I bet if we make some effort to keep our employees relatively happy, customers might also have a better experience in our stores!"
IMO/rant, few businesses/people seem to grasp this and all think there is some magic "business hack" they can do while avoiding doing the core business thing well. And I don't think it's that they don't know it, it's the divorce between the reality they themselves likely desire to live in and experience, and the reality they build/provide day to day in their work. But, that plagues everything these days tbh. Nobody just wants to do the fundamentals well, everyone is looking for "this one simple hack" that alleviates having to just do the work. The calculator might save you some money, but it'll never, by itself, extract the gold from the mine.
Re: How H-E-B became Texas' most beloved brand (2024)
#9The biggest difference I’ve noticed is HEB has plenty of employees who don’t seem depressed to be there. When I’ve been to HEB I see plenty of cashier lanes open, each with a cashier and bagger, people stocking aisles, a team behind the butcher and bakery counters, etc. By comparison, Kroger seems to try and have a skeleton crew at all times. Usually a single cashier, a self checkout supervisor, and a couple of peopl…
I've experienced the same thing except sed 's/HEB/Publix/g' This is probably just a 'Kroger vs nice supermarket' thing.
Kroger is one example. Most other stores in Texas had the same depressed skeleton crew feel, except for higher end options that cost 3x normal groceries.
Same thing for Bucee’s compared to normal gas stations.
Bucee’s popularity exploded by asking “what if we paid someone to clean the bathrooms at a gas station” and following the logical chain of thought from there.
People like spending money at businesses that aren’t depressing or gross to be in.
Re: How H-E-B became Texas' most beloved brand (2024)
#10The biggest difference I’ve noticed is HEB has plenty of employees who don’t seem depressed to be there. When I’ve been to HEB I see plenty of cashier lanes open, each with a cashier and bagger, people stocking aisles, a team behind the butcher and bakery counters, etc. By comparison, Kroger seems to try and have a skeleton crew at all times. Usually a single cashier, a self checkout supervisor, and a couple of peopl…
Yep. And they don't charge much of a premium to deliver this. I can buy things at HEB and not worry about them being expired/etc, even for grocery pickup. Kroger, afaict, _chooses_ the expiring/broken stuff if you do grocery pickup. Kroger is closer to me so I've given it several chances, but every time they seem to get me in a new way to get me with opened, expired, or damaged stuff, and I won't be bothered to estab…
It’s interesting that the private supermarkets (TJs, HEB) seem to both follow this happy and overstaffed model, and the public ones (Kroger, Albertsons/Safeway) do the opposite.
Albertson’s adds insult to injury by overcharging for everything. Tomato? $4.99/lb please.