H-E-B — Local services in Mont Belvieu

This store's team goes above and beyond!

The Sunday afternoon before Hurricane Nicolas had most of the Mont Belvieu community at this HEB stocking up on storm-rideout food and supplies. The store was packed and experienced frequent traffic jams of people in the aisle intersections, and yet store employees were everywhere busily and speedily restocking shelves. Thanks to their efforts during this hectic day, I still found everything on my list.

The majority of the checkouts were staffed with cashiers and baggers and no line exceeded two customers. My checkout was a breeze.

Adequate staffing and intentional customer service are what sets this store apart from both the nearby Kroger and Walmart locations. It is my observation that on any given day HEB leadership always seems to monitor the status of the checkout lines and quickly opens additional registers when customer lines exceed two customers. Every cashier / bagger team I encounter has been friendly, often energetic, and has me rung up and ready to leave in less than two minutes, regardless of how full my cart was.

In comparison, Kroger seems (in my experience) to utilize fewer checkouts until embarrassingly long lines are backing into the aisles. While I have found Kroger employees to be usually friendly, they do ring and bag groceries at a much slower pace than HEB. They also once charged my total bill against another customer's credit card. I don't know how it happened but it took over twenty minutes to resolve.

I almost don't bother comparing any store with Walmart, which relies too heavily on self-checkout. If a communist government opened its own grocery store chain, staffed it with poorly paid employees, and operated it with wasteful, burecratic inefficiency, the final gloomy product would resemble Walmart. I recently had to wait in line to use a self-checkout because several were out of service and the employees monitoring this area either couldn't or just didn't attempt to restart them.

Thank you HEB for being such a light among the ailing grocery industry. Your Mont Belvieu location is an integral part of our community for which we are grateful. Please keep up...

I previously over the years have had a disappointing experience with curbside. However, in recent times, I have used curbside less but have had a near flawless experience. So I am writing a new review.

Curbside overall has been good. However, I have discovered curbside is not "free". Which wouldn't make sense that it was. The average item cost is 4% higher overall online vs in store. This doesn't bother me, but should be known. Paying for this convenience is expected.

If you spend $500 on groceries, the average price for curbside service will be $20. If you spend $1000 a month on groceries through curbside, that's $40 a month on average. Not every item is 4% more.

Most people would balk at that price for this service at online check out.

In store, my experience has been good. Most things in stock and the meat counter and seafood counter have been helpful. I enjoy being able to have my meat cut to my desired thickness and still getting the value pack price where applicable.

One complaint is the laid back atmosphere I experience at the check out at times. The past two times I visited the bagger and the cashier talk the entire time while ignoring me, the customer. I do not expect to be treated like loyalty, however this situation becomes awkward for the customer.

Another thing I noticed is the personal shoppers appear to think their work is top tier importance over the in-store customer shoppers. They tend to position their large cart between you and the produce scale and are always appearing to have a sense of urgency until their coworkers want to mingle. Kind of an odd dynamic.

Overall, I enjoy HEB vs competition. I shop Kroger for certain items and Walmart....

This HEB is very nice! And has some of the nicest employees! Everytime i have been it has been a pleasant experience! Cant say enough about selection love their meat section .. Update! Took my 83 y.o mother there and when we were leaving she had a basket and for some reason when they built it they have curbs and that makes no sense at all when people have grocery baskets that are heavy neither one of us noticed the curb and her basket went off the curb and tipped over and she fell and hit her head and tore a lot of skin off of her arm had a black eye and lacerations to her head ..ended up going to the hospital . there were 2 lady's that works for heb that witnessed it and were so nice. While this was going on another elderly lady came very close to doing the exact same thing..the manager came out and took down my info and not one time did anyone call just to see if she was ok. I think that is some sad customer relations. Makes me think we should have sued to get their attention. It makes absolutely no sense to have those curbs . but a little customer care would have...