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 prices, store brands that are often better than national, and they usually have a good produce selection. When we moved to the San Antonio area a decade ago, having access to HEB again was one of the most exciting parts of the move.
I go to Texas to visit family and a visit or two to H-E-B is usually a part of that. They operate great stores, they treat their employees well (several family members have worked there) and they have great products. I love my local grocery store where I shop but H-E-B is pretty much next level.
The HEB across the street from me took down their kitchen and installed a pizza oven and now they just sell pizzas. They're good pizzas but I do miss the Tex-Mex.
They still have an "Asian" market too but it's far too expensive for what it is, mostly sushi with various kind of goop drizzled on top.
> 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.
I don’t think that ruling distills down that far. But I will grant you that if you’re leaving enough obvious money on the table, activist investors will come knocking.
> 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 class is chasing after efficiency, how to do more with less. And their idols are the likes of Walmart who will shut down a store if anyone says "union" and who aggressively negotiates for tax breaks in every location where their stores go up.
But further, venture capitalists have learned that one of the most effective ways to extract capital is to purchase well respected brands and destroy their quality while sucking off every last bit of value before customers wise up to the impending death of a beloved brand (see Sears, KMart, and basically all of fast food at this point. Also, be prepared to see this in your vet, dentist, and retirement homes).
People make millions doing these awful things which is why they keep happening. It's simply a lot harder and less profitable to make a "good" company which makes good products and respects their customers. And if H-E-B ever sells to a 3rd party, exactly the same thing will happen to them in a heartbeat.
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 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.
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.
> 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.
Unfortunately , it seems to work for Kroger.
As customers we hate it, but Kroger sells something like 20% of all groceries in the US, and HEB is a s small by comparison regional grocer
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.
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.
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 prices, store brands that are often better than national, and they usually have a good produce selection. When we moved to the San Antonio area a decade ago, having access to HEB again was one of the most exciting parts of the move.
They still have an "Asian" market too but it's far too expensive for what it is, mostly sushi with various kind of goop drizzled on top.
> ... 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.
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,....
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 class is chasing after efficiency, how to do more with less. And their idols are the likes of Walmart who will shut down a store if anyone says "union" and who aggressively negotiates for tax breaks in every location where their stores go up.
But further, venture capitalists have learned that one of the most effective ways to extract capital is to purchase well respected brands and destroy their quality while sucking off every last bit of value before customers wise up to the impending death of a beloved brand (see Sears, KMart, and basically all of fast food at this point. Also, be prepared to see this in your vet, dentist, and retirement homes).
People make millions doing these awful things which is why they keep happening. It's simply a lot harder and less profitable to make a "good" company which makes good products and respects their customers. And if H-E-B ever sells to a 3rd party, exactly the same thing will happen to them in a heartbeat.
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.
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.
Unfortunately , it seems to work for Kroger.
As customers we hate it, but Kroger sells something like 20% of all groceries in the US, and HEB is a s small by comparison regional grocer
Albertson’s adds insult to injury by overcharging for everything. Tomato? $4.99/lb please.
This is probably just a 'Kroger vs nice supermarket' thing.
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.
(/s)