Been in San Antonio over a year now..

[becky76]

I've been here about 7 months. I moved here from New Jersey. I agree the roads here are dirty, to the point that sometimes when you clean your windshield it's like you are wiping mud off the windshield. The drivers here don't know how to use their turn signals, so changing lanes can be dangerous. I would also like to see a different option for a grocery store besides HEB. Why do they have a monopoly in this state?

[Pancho-Villa]

Originally Posted by becky76

I've been here about 7 months. I moved here from New Jersey. I agree the roads here are dirty, to the point that sometimes when you clean your windshield it's like you are wiping mud off the windshield. The drivers here don't know how to use their turn signals, so changing lanes can be dangerous. I would also like to see a different option for a grocery store besides HEB. Why do they have a monopoly in this state?

It's not "in this state"...there are plenty of other options in Dallas, Houston, Austin etc...SA is the only large city with this issue. There were other options here too...but they decided to pull out long ago.

[zhugeliang1]

HEB has a grip on the grocery market here in San Antonio, any grocery chain that tries to get in here will be stompled by HEB. I still remember how Albertsons used to be there. I think Randalls used to be in San Antonio much earlier too?

[ged_782]

Originally Posted by zhugeliang1

I think Randalls used to be in San Antonio much earlier too?

I'm pretty sure Randall's was never in San Antonio. I can say with certainty, if they ever were here, it was very brief, and they never got a foothold. An earlier poster remembered a Winn-Dixie somewhere on 281 in the early 1990s, but I never remember them being here, either. That would be another case where if they were here, they never got a foothold, and didn't last very long. I thought Winn-Dixie pulled out of Texas altogether, a number of years ago.

Until about the late 1970s, Handy-Andy and HEB were the major players in San Antonio, with Handy-Andy probably being slightly more dominant, up to that point. Piggly-Wiggly probably would have been the number three player. Albertsons (then Skaggs-Albertsons) entered the San Antonio market in the 1970s, and Kroger entered in the early 1980s. A number of Kroger stores were built directly across the street from an existing HEB. Both of those national chains have since pulled out of San Antonio.