HEB is a grocery chain located mainly in Texas and Mexico. Many packaged goods have English on one side and Spanish on the other. Ticks me off so I spend time turning the English labels to the front. If I wanted to buy a Spanish labeled product, I’d move to Mexico.
Pretty much everything about HEB ticks me off. Ours is the only grocery in town so we get all the garbage their other stores refuse to take. Our “fresh” shelf bread comes in frozen. The canned goods are dusty and dented. The fresh produce is old. Strawberries have fuzz on them by day 3 and onions are ready to sprout (threw out an onion today and two avocados yesterday - Usually, I try to drive a few towns over to Walmart to get decent produce). You have to look closely at the potato bags to make sure they aren’t rotted. Can’t tell you how many complete egg cartons I’ve had to throw out because they’re cracked (carton is fine so I suspect they repackage the broken ones in decent cartons). They secure the egg cartons so you can’t look inside. Many times, packaged items are damaged or opened.
They don’t take coupons anymore. When they did, they’d take the big savings coupon items off the shelves for some reason. With the store weekly ads, they won’t stock what’s on sale. Many items in their weekly ads have never been stocked at the store. I’ve complained to HQ without success. Recently, I found an old blog complaining about this store so I’m not the only one and it’s out there on the web so HQ has no excuse of not knowing. The neighbors all complain about it and have for decades.
Fish fillets were advertised for a good long while a few years ago but they never put any out. After nonstop complaining, they finally told me to meet “the guy” at the back of the store and he’d give me some. It was like a drug buy (not that I know about those) all hush-hush and sneaky. When I got to the check out, the cashier and bag boy were all shocked saying they didn’t know they had any fish.
HEB has what they call “meal deals” where you buy one thing and get x, y, z free. Problem is, half the time they don’t have the complete deal with the excuse, “the truck didn’t deliver it.” One time, they didn’t have the tortillas for a taco “meal deal” so I asked the manager if they’d get some in. He said the truck was going to deliver 4. Ok, I know their game so asked specifically if that was 4 cases of tortilla packages or 4 packages (8 tortillas per package). He admitted the truck was only bringing 4 packages. WHAT?!? Right there you knew they were old and/or were from a broken case.
I buy the very basics and cook from scratch but once in a while it might be nice to splurge a little. Snort, that ain’t happening. Don’t expect to present a cheese tray to guests because they don’t stock much outside of cheddar, shredded mozz and Velvetta. Don’t expect to put out a tray of olives because they only sell canned black olives and jarred green ones with the pimentos in the middle. Forget a relish tray because they haven’t sold fresh cauliflower in years and rarely sell fresh broccoli (limp). It doesn’t have a deli, bakery or pharmacy like the stores elsewhere.
We live in a low income retirement area but they’re always stocking ridiculous items with higher priced brands. They own 3 in-store brands - HEB, Hill Country Fare and Central Market. Inevitably, they’ll only stock the higher priced Central Market. They’ll also take away the cheaper brands but bring in Whataburger brand (why??) or whatever brands like this cricket hooey that no one wants. Just give me cheap HEB ketchup for $1, I don’t want Whataburger for twice that price.
Are you the author of that blog?