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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 op

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.

CommieBobDole 3mo ago
I've experienced the same thing except sed 's/HEB/Publix/g' This is probably just a 'Kroger vs nice supermarket' thing.
- MeetingsBrowser 3mo ago
  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 3mo ago
    Buc-ee’s ain’t cheap. But people pay it.
    - evilduck 3mo ago
      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.
- antonymoose 3mo ago
  Perhaps interesting, my Publix experiences are almost always… not great. The staff seems aged (don’t hate me, I’m also aged!) - but they seem more on the apathetic and miserable side of the spectrum. I always heard how well they treat their employees so I assume it is some kind of retail trap where the job is too good to give up but never good enough to be truly good?
- devilbunny 3mo ago
  Kroger can and does run nice stores. Kroger Signature, Harris Teeter are two I've been in relatively recently. You're also only going to find those in the same kinds of places you'd find a Trader Joe's or Costco - only in the nicest parts of town unless it's very densely populated or a small but rich enclave.
99954bb63ccc 3mo ago
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 3mo ago
  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 3mo ago
    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.
steve-atx-7600 3mo ago
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.
tofuziggy 3mo ago
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CommieBobDole 3mo ago

I've experienced the same thing except sed 's/HEB/Publix/g' This is probably just a 'Kroger vs nice supermarket' thing.

MeetingsBrowser 3mo ago
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 3mo ago
  Buc-ee’s ain’t cheap. But people pay it.
  - evilduck 3mo ago
    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.
antonymoose 3mo ago
Perhaps interesting, my Publix experiences are almost always… not great. The staff seems aged (don’t hate me, I’m also aged!) - but they seem more on the apathetic and miserable side of the spectrum. I always heard how well they treat their employees so I assume it is some kind of retail trap where the job is too good to give up but never good enough to be truly good?
devilbunny 3mo ago
Kroger can and does run nice stores. Kroger Signature, Harris Teeter are two I've been in relatively recently. You're also only going to find those in the same kinds of places you'd find a Trader Joe's or Costco - only in the nicest parts of town unless it's very densely populated or a small but rich enclave.

99954bb63ccc 3mo ago

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 3mo ago
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 3mo ago
  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.

steve-atx-7600 3mo ago

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.

tofuziggy 3mo ago

[dead]