Posted on 11/08/2014 6:11:36 AM PST by bgill
The local HEB (grocery store) in Bastrop is back in business after spending the better part of a week cleaning up after a fire. In that time it revealed how few resources there are in rural areas for people looking for healthy groceries... "I mean you're going to have to drive 20 miles to another HEB."
(Excerpt) Read more at keyetv.com ...
Bastop knows how to get through tough times. They were the ones who had the horrible wildfires a few years ago.
ping list worthy?
HEB is a behemoth. They drive all competitors out of business, especially the Mom and Pop stores.
Lived in Bastrop as a kid. It has built up some since then.
Makes me wonder how my grandparents ever survived without a major grocery chain near their rural Missouri farm.
Salt, sugar, coffee, flour, tobacco. Lots of people couldn't manage that anymore.
/johnny
Ditto, I can remember when the first “supermarket” open in my grandmother’s town. Everybody was amazed and impressed.
Reminds me of the time I lived in a very, very sparsely populated area and the slogan of the nearest grocery store was "We may be the only grocery store in town, but we try not to act like it".
Um, yes, you did.
What we have there is a “food desert” according to researchers with lots of government cash.
The only thing to fix it is more government cash. More, more, more!
(sigh)
Idiots.
We lived 45-60 minutes to the nearest town for years, and you know what? We lived in the middle of nowhere because we wanted to live there.
We planned for it. Kept staples at home and shopped in bulk when we went in. Always had water and food for at least a few weeks.
One side of my family was dirt poor during the Depression, and they lived on what they grew and traded. They fed themselves in the winter with what they put back.
Can no one do anything for themselves anymore?
Is 20 miles to another HEB really so far away? A two-hour round-trip excursion at most?
No, it is a fairly small sub - regional, controlled by its founding family. Because of their service and pricing, they have managed to hold off the behemoths (to use your words). Territory expansion has tended to come through their niche Central Market stores. (They have only a few hundred stores in Texas, and some operations in Mexico.) There are still Butts running Harry E. Butts Grocery stores. So it IS a mom & pop operation.
You must be confusing them with some other chain.
What the he11 is this story about?
They have WalMart.
fred cantu should be fred cannot MSM Scum reporter.
To city folk, it is far. I drive that normally to the store which is why I don’t go but once a month or so.
For those who don’t know, HEB is named for Howard E. Butt, the original owner’s son. There was a joke back in the day that HEB and Piggly Wiggly were going partner up and become Wiggly Butt. Hey, when you’re a kid, that’s really funny.
“Wiggly Butt. Hey, when you’re a kid, that’s really funny.”
—
It’s still funny.:-)
.
At the same time opposing any regional chains because they are the “hometown” grocer. Saw the same thing when I lived in Washington state. The “hometown” grocer did everything they could to oppose any competition, bragging about locally sourced food, etc. Their store brand apple juice came from China.
I never even heard of HEB and I’ve been around a long time.
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HEB started in Kerrville, about 1905, IIRC. My grandfather was store employee #5!
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