H-E-B — Attraction in Austin

Update (Jan 2024):

Praise - Fewer items seem to be out of stock these days - good job team.

Shame - HEB Mgmt team: The credit/debit card payment terminals are literally on their last leg and should have been replaced years ago. I can’t even count the number of times my card has been “declined” or unable to be read. Each and every time this happens, I pull out my phone and check my bank and there are always sufficient funds available so the problem has to be HEB’s card machines. They then tell you to just keep inserting it 3 times so the machine will prompt you to swipe it (this is their patched-together workaround that has essentially become the “standard” process most customers are forced to go through to check out). However, now their workaround even fails sometimes - the machine kept declining my Chase debit card the other day (the exact same card I use every time). Obviously it’s embarrassing to go through that in the first place, so I began panicking, wondering if something big hit my bank I wasn’t expecting. …Nope. Checked the bank account there at the terminal in front of everyone only to find that I had more than enough funds available. So the insert 3x then swipe was still declining over and over, so finally they told me that I needed to hit the bypass key to avoid using my pin (even though I am 10000% positive the pin I was putting in was absolutely correct as I was doing it carefully and slow and I know my pin) - and it magically worked. I’ve never had to do this before, so why now, randomly, on this one transaction?

This is ridiculous - all because HEB is GREEDY - they aren’t willing to spend the money to upgrade their jankity, decrepit card readers to make their customers’ (that they care SO MUCH about) experiences better. It’s all about lining their pockets and fattening up their bottom line to meet what are clearly delusional and absurd financial performance targets for HEB’s stock. Classic example of the perversion of capitalism where you have the board and C-suite squeezing everywhere it doesn’t make sense to squeeze at the expense of the people who pay their salaries.

This is just sad to be honest.

Original post (Oct 2023):

This HEB is always out of things, doesn’t have a very good selection, you have to buy your own bags, and I even had to bag my items by myself because they didn’t have a bagger when I checked out. Not a very...

This store, out of all the HEB chain stores, I was told was the most efficient as far as a carbon footprint. This one even looks and has a layout like most of the Central Markets in Austin. Huge selections of just about any food, mostly artisan and organic products are available for a very reasonable price. Check the place out if you just moved to the area.

Update 11/22/23

The day before Thanksgiving one has to go to the grocery store no matter how you attempt to avoid it. I would call it a pre-holiday test as the rush first begins before we all go from red to black.

The line started to go around the inside of the store to pay for goods ... I figured that I had time to count the sales as the beeps were going into my brain, from what I saw this location cleared more than five times the purchases than the regular lanes. It went FAST.

It's a little claustrophobic for my tastes. One could feel the temperature rise from the body heat emanating from the customers, it seemed to staff were hiding. There is no way to exit some aisles. Shelby Nantes expected, but there was absolutely no way to find egress in case of an emergency. Kids were climbing up the shelves and items were shoved everywhere. Of course that's going to happen while waiting in the long lines in the aisles but...

The self-checkout. Never have I seen any queue go that quickly. I can't say for certainty that there was five times the amount of purchases going through the self-checkout then the regular lanes, but they sure do what they're doing in that section. If only the store were a...

HEB Meuller Food Hall & Bar. We tried Yumai Japanese, Roots Chicken, & the Meltery. Yum!

Note: to get food first, enter through the main entrance of HEB grocery.

The skewers at Yumai are delish! Their fried rice is exactly what I expected for Japanese fried rice & so delicious! The potstickers were so tasty. It's standard gyoza. The pastry was nice & thin. But, I felt like the pastry was just a little underdone. Not a big deal because the meat was cooked & they were still very tasty. The dumpling sauce was a little sweet & spicy; just a little thicker than most & worked well to coat the dumpling.

Roots Chicken fries the chicken in duck fat & it was so delicious! They were not even a little greasy & very flavorful. We had the fried chicken biscuit. The biscuit passes the granny test: she'd be proud. It was dressed with Steen's syrup butter with choppedpickled peppers all in it. Not many Texans know about Steen's. It's a Louisiana thing. It really added weight & was a good counterbalance to the brightness of the pickled peppers (which I'm guessing are cherry peppers).

We tried the Heart of Texas sandwich at the Meltery: BBQ brisket in a grilled cheese. Yum!

We sat down for our meal & washed it all down with a Texas sourced beer at the bar. It's not very large, but we were there in the early afternoon so it wasn't busy.

They have a curated selection of Texas beers & wines on tap. Happy hour is M-F from 3-7.

Great food hall experience!!...