[MeetingsBrowser]

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.

[99954bb63ccc]

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.

[rottencupcakes]

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.

[vikingerik]

Publix is also on that first list, of happy and overstaffed and privately owned. I do most of my shopping there and it's much more pleasurable than Kroger or Walmart.

[lotsofpulp]

They are not serving the same customers. HEB operates in a state that has exploded economically for quite a few decades, and where people have large, growing families that cook a lot.

TJs and Costco also have similar fan bases, but they restrict their stores to the richer side of town.

Kroger and Albertsons, however, have operations in many stagnant or declining areas, saddled with union contracts from a long time ago when those places were not stagnant. Household sizes and hence the utility of full service grocers have fallen precipitously for many of their stores.

There is certainly a component of HEB’s leaders choosing to not squeeze a short term profit now, but they wouldn’t be able to do it if Walmart and Kroger could eat their lunch because their customer base was declining in numbers and purchasing power.

Hell, even Kroger and Albertsons’ customer base is declining in purchasing power which is why not Aldi and Lidl are wrecking them wherever Walmart hasn’t.

[MeetingsBrowser]

> 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

[steve-atx-7600]

Safeway and its nationwide equivalents are the epitome of this. These stores haven’t changed since at least when I was a kid in the 80s. They end up selecting for the most desperate employees because they treat them so badly.

[CommieBobDole]

I've experienced the same thing except sed 's/HEB/Publix/g'

This is probably just a 'Kroger vs nice supermarket' thing.

[MeetingsBrowser]

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.

[rottencupcakes]

Buc-ee’s ain’t cheap. But people pay it.

[evilduck]

Their gas is priced competitively. Everything is hard to compare because it's usually not even available aty other gas stations. It's like half of a Bass Pro Shops tacked on to a bizarre bbq restaurant that lacks seating. Comparing it to 7-11 or a Sinclair or Conoco gas station makes little sense. It's closer to a Love's Travel Center, and in which case their pricing holds up.