Stores you wish would come to Austin, TX? (Houston, Dallas: safe area, quality of life)

[ashbeeigh]

Originally Posted by michaeltx9412

Savers and Ollie's

There used to be several Savers in Austin. They closed right before the pandemic. There is still one in Cedar Park. The only other Texas location is in El Paso. Upon googling it looks like Austin was not the only place where they closed either.,

[TexasHorseLady]

Originally Posted by atxcio

They are regional, and have a very very much higher knowledge of what exactly their markets want, and provide that at low prices. Among other things (they are often lauded for their management, nationally during the COVID crisis.) National chains have difficulty competing when they depend on consistency across all their stores for efficiency.

This. HEB has ALL the demographics and knows how to use them. I'm a grocery store groupie, having been a personal chef in a past life (or vice versa, not sure which came first), and have shopped at most of the HEB's (and other stores) in the area and have favorites for one thing or another all across Central Texas. HEB tailors their stores to the area they are in (or are about to be in - no real estate agent worth their salt doesn't pay attention to what HEB is doing because that's a good way to predict the market).

HEB buys land and holds it, sometimes for decades, until they judge it is the right time to build because the market is/will shortly be there. And then they sell what that market wants.

Add that to the fact that in disasters they tend to beat everyone, Red Cross, FEMA, everyone, to the area with help of all kinds - food, water, assistance in figuring out insurance claims, you name it (they have a fleet of semis for just this), and brand loyalty is created, and that's really hard for other chains to compete with.

It's not that they are aggressively running other chains out, just that they are working hard to serve their customers in ways both grocery and beyond grocery.

[Trainwreck20]

Kroger never had a very big presence here in Austin to begin with; it isn't like they got run out, they just never grew beyond one or two stores and eventually focused elsewhere.

The people that own/owned HEB are actually very GOOD people in the sense that they have historically cared about helping people out - whether customers or employees or just people in general. That, combined with being a private company that doesn't have to worry about shareholders, gives them an edge on many other big grocery stores.

I will disagree with THL a little - they are very aware of the competition and make decisions based on what the competition may or may not be doing. Those properties they hold for decades? Part of the reason is to obscure what they are planning to do and make it difficult for the competition to know where an HEB may pop up one day.

[ATX Wahine]

My tiny Oak Hill HEB is closing in the next week or so.

I’m actually pretty sad about it. Sometimes you don’t want to run the gauntlet of a huge parking lot and massive-sized store to buy milk and eggs. The Oak Hill HEB is old and decrepit but full of soul. I will miss Ophie, HEB’s longest-time employee, who has been there greeting customers forever.

[Trainwreck20]

Originally Posted by ATX Wahine

My tiny Oak Hill HEB is closing in the next week or so.

I’m actually pretty sad about it. Sometimes you don’t want to run the gauntlet of a huge parking lot and massive-sized store to buy milk and eggs. The Oak Hill HEB is old and decrepit but full of soul. I will miss Ophie, HEB’s longest-time employee, who has been there greeting customers forever.

The OH HEB is closed as of Tuesday, I think? And the new one opened the same day or the next? I have not been to the new one, so not sure. They were busing employees from the old store parking lot to the new one, I think.

[TexasHorseLady]

Originally Posted by ATX Wahine

My tiny Oak Hill HEB is closing in the next week or so.

I’m actually pretty sad about it. Sometimes you don’t want to run the gauntlet of a huge parking lot and massive-sized store to buy milk and eggs. The Oak Hill HEB is old and decrepit but full of soul. I will miss Ophie, HEB’s longest-time employee, who has been there greeting customers forever.

I'm so sorry to hear that it's closing. Long ago, when we lived in Barton Hills and our daughter went to the Waldorf School in Oak Hill, I shopped there often.

[ATX Wahine]

Originally Posted by TexasHorseLady

I'm so sorry to hear that it's closing. Long ago, when we lived in Barton Hills and our daughter went to the Waldorf School in Oak Hill, I shopped there often.

THL, you’d be disgusted if you saw what’s happening in Oak Hill. Massive swaths of trees felled in the middle of the night along a three mile stretch of 290 and about a mile up 71 … for the Oak Hill Parkway project. Which is why they decided to shut that HEB down. It’s going to be swallowed by this project.

It’s a little heartbreaking. So many trees.

[TexasHorseLady]

Originally Posted by ATX Wahine

THL, you’d be disgusted if you saw what’s happening in Oak Hill. Massive swaths of trees felled in the middle of the night along a three mile stretch of 290 and about a mile up 71 … for the Oak Hill Parkway project. Which is why they decided to shut that HEB down. It’s going to be swallowed by this project.

It’s a little heartbreaking. So many trees.

I see that in so many places these days. Determinedly destroying everything that makes a place worth living in, in obeisance to almighty mammon. Heartbreaking, indeed.

[ATX Wahine]

I feel like my part of town is going to need a new name once they kill all the oaks and grade the hills into flat mesas.

[atxcio]

Originally Posted by ATX Wahine

I feel like my part of town is going to need a new name once they kill all the oaks and grade the hills into flat mesas.

Oak Kill. It’s pronounced the same.