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How H-E-B became Texas' most beloved brand (2024)

texashighways.com

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Re: How H-E-B became Texas' most beloved brand (2024)

#31

Post by steve-atx-7600 »

MeetingsBrowser wrote: post #4

The 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…

Safeway and its nationwide equivalents are the epitome of this. These stores haven’t changed since at least when I was a kid in the 80s. They end up selecting for the most desperate employees because they treat them so badly.

Re: How H-E-B became Texas' most beloved brand (2024)

#33

Post by steve-atx-7600 »

RhysU wrote: post #22

I want someone to start a monthly subscription service that mails HEB tortillas within the continental US using UT Austin students as the smurfs. The ad copy writes itself.

The difference is that cook them in something cast iron pan like with lard the way my grandmother did. In her case, big ass can of crisco. I bet a lot of people would be turned off if they realized that, but there ain’t no way around it for the taste.

Re: How H-E-B became Texas' most beloved brand (2024)

#34

Post by lotsofpulp »

doodlebugging wrote: post #23

The Butts are some good people. When I was a kid in Central Texas my family shopped at their stores. It was a real drag to move to a part of Texas outside their operating range and spend so many years there so their recent expansion across the state is the one welcome thing about Texas. HEB and their upscale Central Market are the only grocery stores that we visit. We do drop by World Market occasionally for oddball…

> We stopped going there after we took a rafting trip down the Salmon in Idaho and rounded a curve in the river and found a large vacation home built right up on the bank complete with a concrete boat ramp.

The Albertsons founding family and heirs has had nothing to do with Albertsons grocery stores for at least 20 years.

If I were you, and if the information above was true, my beef would be with the government and the voters.

Re: How H-E-B became Texas' most beloved brand (2024)

#35

Post by niwtsol »

steve-atx-7600 wrote: post #27
asciimov wrote: post #17

My dad worked for HEB for 35 years. He never planned to stay there when he started in the late eighties, but they had better hours than his prior work as a photojournalist and treated him a whole lot better. HEB believes that if you treat your employees right, that they will in turn treat their customers well. As someone that has spent years living away from HEB they are just a great store to have access to. Better p…

Same here. After 7 years out of state, I moved back to TX and was at HEB almost every day to marvel at the selection of products and ready to eat foods (was also single).

I haven’t lived in Texas for about 10 years now, anytime my mom comes to visit and she asks “can I bring you anything?” - I always ask her to bring me a couple packages of HEB tortillas. The multiple mentions of the tortillas in this story has me salivating.

Re: How H-E-B became Texas' most beloved brand (2024)

#36

Post by lotsofpulp »

larrydag wrote: post #3
bell-cot wrote: post #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" 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.

The share buybacks help offset these big companies’ RSUs for highly compensated employees. The share buybacks also allow shareholders to have a taxable event when they want to, not when the business wants them to.

It would be crazy not to do share buybacks for a growing business.

Re: How H-E-B became Texas' most beloved brand (2024)

#37

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

cogman10 wrote: post #13
bell-cot wrote: post #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" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co .

> Why does H-E-B do so many nice things for the state? But: Why aren’t more companies like H-E-B? Regardless any sort of legal principle, the fact is capitalism rewards exploitation. The more a company exploits, the more profit it can bring in. Whether that be worker or customer. While it's not stated that way in business management courses, that's exactly how it's taught in a round about way. The entire business cla…

> The more a company exploits, the more profit it can bring in.

In the short run, that doesn't seem worth arguing with.

It isn't clear whether or not it is really true in the long run. If shareholders (and courts) demanded the long view, it's equally unclear if the exploitation approach could really have taken hold.

Re: How H-E-B became Texas' most beloved brand (2024)

#38

Post by bell-cot »

throw0101a wrote: post #7
bell-cot wrote: post #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" 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 object…

Literally, you are kinda correct about Dodge. Practically, not so much. The court's judgement quite effectively ordered to Ford to abandon his rather pro-social plan, the keystone of which was dramatic corporate growth, in favor of giving his minority shareholders a big hunk of the money (needed for that plan) ASAP.

The difference between that decision and "Don't be Good" is that if you have zero greedy shareholders, or are ready for a protracted and uncertain legal battle against them, then you might get away with being good. Otherwise - make sure any seeming good you do is some combination of de minimis and trivial to defend as a tactic to maximize shareholder profits.

(Hobby Lobby is a decision about about closely-held and privately-held corporations, when they are claiming strong religious reasons for policies which a majority of the Supreme Count Justices have very obvious ideological reasons to favor. And also have both the motive and resources to spends years fighting through the Federal Court System. The relevance to 99.99% of the decisions made by corporations is very close to nill.)

Re: How H-E-B became Texas' most beloved brand (2024)

#39

Post by lotsofpulp »

rottencupcakes wrote: post #10
99954bb63ccc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They are not serving the same customers. HEB operates in a state that has exploded economically for quite a few decades, and where people have large, growing families that cook a lot.

TJs and Costco also have similar fan bases, but they restrict their stores to the richer side of town.

Kroger and Albertsons, however, have operations in many stagnant or declining areas, saddled with union contracts from a long time ago when those places were not stagnant. Household sizes and hence the utility of full service grocers have fallen precipitously for many of their stores.

There is certainly a component of HEB’s leaders choosing to not squeeze a short term profit now, but they wouldn’t be able to do it if Walmart and Kroger could eat their lunch because their customer base was declining in numbers and purchasing power.

Hell, even Kroger and Albertsons’ customer base is declining in purchasing power which is why not Aldi and Lidl are wrecking them wherever Walmart hasn’t.

Re: How H-E-B became Texas' most beloved brand (2024)

#40

Post by vikingerik »

rottencupcakes wrote: post #10
99954bb63ccc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Publix is also on that first list, of happy and overstaffed and privately owned. I do most of my shopping there and it's much more pleasurable than Kroger or Walmart.
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