H-E-B — Attraction in San Antonio

Update: 11 Nov 2024 As concerns customer service this HEB is a DISASTER! Allow me to elaborate: I was on my way to the register and stopped to grab a Toblerone chocolate bar when an a female voice blared over the horn that the store will be closing in a half hour. She reiterated her message and slowed her pace to declaratively emphasize the importance of the customer understanding that she meant business and as if to imply that the customer needed to acquire the same sense of urgency that she stressed! My thoughts were on how "low brow" and curiously unprofessional it was for the management to teeter on the line of chasing out customers from the business while not going over the line into a complete breakdown in business practices. Prior to that point I recalled how this same sense of indifference toward the customer was expressed in the many pallets of food to be stocked, blocking isles the store over, impeding customers ability to shop! When I made it to the twenty or so registers at the front only one employee register was staffed with a long line streaming out of it! I approached another register where there was no line and two carefree female employees having a powwow "smoking and joking" probably making plans for the after party! The last thing on their agenda was helping customers check out! Mind you, all the while the management was screaming for the customers to hurry and get out! I sauntered over to the self check where half of those registers were either broken or shut down! The overall message however was the same! Nothing at this HEB is in place to serve the customer and everything is set up to serve the employee so they can hurry and flee the premises as soon as the minute hand strikes the hour! Everything about the management approach of this HEB sends the message that the customer is the LOWEST PRIORITY! I expressed my indignation at the shortcomings of the customer service to an official looking woman standing at a register, doing little and seemingly managing the checker of the register that just opened! She was unimpressed, unaffected by and unapologetic towards my disapproval of their service to the customer! She merely confirmed all of my conclusions that I had arrived at. I'm not sure these employees are even capable of rising to a higher standard! They can't even acknowledge their mistakes!

25 Nov 2023. Recently I stopped here for groceries and decided to pick up a French baguette (bread for the uninitiated). It stated it's weight was 1lb. (Pound) on the label, but it felt lighter in hand so I weighed it on the scale provided by HEB. It was .60 lbs or a little over a 1/2 lb. It was about half the weight stated on the label. The price was approximately $2/lb for what wasn't a pound! I spoke with the manager, Adam, here at De Zavala HEB about the baguettes weighing under a lb and not what they are stated as weighing. He said: "the weight doesn't matter because the machine makes the label," so he blamed it on the machine. So, according to this manger Adam you don't tell the machine what label to print, it tells the employee what to do! It didn't matter that customers were being lied to about getting a pound of bread at $1.98 when they weren't rather they were getting half that! So according to him it's ok to short customers half the bread they are paying for! In my understanding that automatically disqualifies Adam from manager status therefore he should be held accountable for his indifference and unprofessionalism! Perhaps he should start again at entry level with the shopping carts or stocking shelves or work somewhere breaking rocks with a hammer since he finds the intricacies of printing a proper label so confounding! If he does all of that well then he can be retrained at HEB Academy starting with management 101! After that there's still the issue of all of the HEB customers who have purchased baguettes at HEB De Zavala and were cheated out of half of their bread! Where are those class action lawsuit...

I used to have a love-hate relationship with this HEB. Now it’s all love. Back in the 00s, this HEB had a lazy inventory staff who would ignore empty spaces in on shelves, for weeks or even months. Expired stuff was routine. The dog food aisle had a notorious rat problem. Now the rats are gone, expired items are pulled more often, and the inventory people are better at staying on top of what needs to be on the shelves. The produce department is a little lax on putting product where the signs and price tags are, but they’re at least in the general vicinity.

I still hate the floor in produce. Everything in your basket bounces around like crazy. On the other hand, I love the white tile floor in the rest of the store. I don’t know what it is with some of these HEBs on the north side and being creepy dark (Hello, Alon bakery/meat market), but I like being able to see what I’m buying when I shop. The white tile also makes everything look cleaner and newer than most HEBs, even though this store is something like 35 years old.

Overall, I like the layout of the store, and how the checkout lines are single file, not that confusing and claustrophobic double line atrocity like at Alon or the Deco store. The aisles are intuitive—things are where you think they should be, although I do get confused in some of the OTC/home health care aisles, probably because I don’t buy those often.

Still think they should put wine in that “healthy living” joke section, because the wood floor there would make the wine look classier, and would sell higher ticket wines. In the 20+ years that I’ve been shopping here, I’ve seen maybe 20 people shopping in those healthy aisles, and most of them are getting sweets from the bulk section.

Still think they should have taken over the old Barnes and Noble to add on to the store and convert it to a Central Market. That would have opened up some of the narrower aisles. Not to mention the ones that have pillars in them on top of that. Good luck getting down those aisles if someone is coming the opposite direction! Another thing that would justify a CM here is that shoppers for it wouldn’t be lacking with the proximity of Shavano/Shavano-adjacent, Bentley Manor, and the location being the first HEB stop coming into the city from Dominion. Why does cruddy Austin have two CMs, while we have only one, despite how many well-to-do people live in or near this one area? I think a CM here would do a bang up business. But what do I know?

Other than those small nits, it’s a great store with a great selection at great prices and a staff that’s friendly. A few are on the quiet side, but never rude. It carries quite a few hard-to-find gourmet items, maybe not as much as Alon or Central Market, but not far off, either. I do wish they would carry some more vegan/vegetarian items, but they’re better than most with what they do carry—and they seem to add new items all the time.

A cool thing here is that there’s a CPS car charging area down by Taco Cabana. Electric car owners can charge up while they shop. I think most of them can handle the long hike to the store itself. So much stuff is nearby that you really don’t need to drive far to get to anything else, be it fast food, hHome Depot, pet supplies, furniture stores, car dealers, or several urgent care centers.

Oh—the curbside service at DeZavala is the fastest of any HEB on this side of town, and in a great spot on top of that. Pro tip: Go down to the Wingstop entry for the fastest route to it. With Steinmart gone, cutting through the lot saves time and contact with speed bumps. 😉

Overall it’s one of the best HEBs for its size in...

If there was the opportunity to give a zero rating I would. This has nothing to do with what the store has to offer in terms of varieties and weekly offers (which I think are limited) but has everything to do with certain members of staff. I am not from the US so when it comes to people bagging your items for you I find it a novelty as I am more than used to (and prepared to bag my own). I have witnessed so many shoppers who refuse to lift a finger and put their own products in bags, expecting staff to do it for them. Selfish when there are big lines and others waiting but maybe people see it as a "right" in this particular store (not witnessed this attitude in Target,Walmart etc). Anyway back to my personal issue. Every time and I mean every time I have reached the checkout the person bagging has walked away from helping. Once or twice you may think it's just one of those things as there isn't a bagger for every checkout. The last 2 times it was obvious that they removed themselves after looking at who was next in line. One even pretended to assist another checkout but did nothing and as soon as I walked away returned to the same checkout I had just vacated. It certainly is prejudice at work here and no mere coincidences. Pathetic and disgusting attitudes of individuals whom I will be holding accountable. ( little do they realise the evidence I am compiling and when the time is correct it will be handed into their head office). Staff around the store are friendly and willing to direct you to the correct aisles and I seem to be served by the same young lady at the customer service centre who again greets with a smile (even though I think she's always busy and on her own!) so it's not the training of all staff members that is...