Lack of grocery stores in Austin / suburbs (Anderson: co-ops, university)

[Trainwreck20]

the quality of human I see working there is horrid

Funny, my experience has been the exact opposite. Mostly polite, friendly, and intelligent high school kids. For years HEB has been know for offering relatively high wage to teenagers and allowing very flexible schedules with low total hours. At the Randalls, I have found that he employees are much more subdued and tend toward the older adult. Between the employees, the empty aisles, and the lack of families shopping there, it usually reminds me of a library. I am not knocking Randalls, because I also like to shop there sometimes for those exact reasons, but I have personally found much more friendly and outgoing personel at the two local HEBs (Slaughter/Escarpment and Brodie/Wm Cannon). The Brodie store is horrendously busy, though, so I rarely go there.

I am not a market expert by any means, but HEB and Randalls have survived by providing what the general public wants. I know there aren't as many in the less densely populated areas, but I suspect that helps keep their costs down. Hutto will have one one day (they are building one in DS right now, too), but I am guessing they are not into speculating by building a store in a growing area and waiting for the population to grow around it. I would assume if the economics are there, that competing grocers would come in.

[jclAustin]

I haven't seen anyone mention Sun Harvest yet. The one I go to is off Anderson Lane near Mopac, and another one is listed off Lamar. They are a small organic oriented grocery store that tends to have good sale prices. The store is older and the selection smaller; reminds me of the neighborhood grocery stores I've known.

They were owned by Wild Oats which has since been acquired by Whole Foods but they sold off the Sun Harvest and Henry's stores to Smart and Final.

The Whole Foods off of 183 & 360 isn't as big as the flag ship, but it's not small. The parking lot gets hectic though. At some point they are supposed to be moving, I think up off braker lane.

[southdown]

Having lived abroad I think grocery shopping here compares very badly -in the UK there are plenty of small local shops plus at least one or two big grocery stores in every area, with good pricing and loads of great choices for all kinds of foods and nationalities. There are several major names - Tesco, Sainsurys and ASDA are the biggest I think. (Mind you ASDA was taken over by Walmart and went rapidly downhill, it now sells the most junk food and the worst fruit & veg of the lot!) I think Tesco is coming over here tho...

And in the UK online shopping is everywhere! My sister in the UK has 4 kids so shopping is a big chore. Instead of spending 2 hours on shopping - at the store with the baby in the cart, then heaving 50 bags in and out of the car, she spends 20 minutes online to pick her groceries and household items, and it is delivered FREE the next day! Or for $10 on a Saturday. Why not here??????

[jhwest]

I think grocery delivery is not so popular here because everybody has cars, so the idea of going to the store is not such a big deal. Also, we're so spread out (esp. in Texas). England is so much more compact. I doubt it's feasible economically to drive all over the metro Austin area to deliver groceries.
Albertson's in Utah will let you shop online and they'll have you're groceries bagged and ready to go at a certain time. You just drive up and they'll load your car. I think this was an extra $5. A pretty reasonable alternative to grocery delivery, I think.

[southdown]

Originally Posted by jhwest

I think grocery delivery is not so popular here because everybody has cars, so the idea of going to the store is not such a big deal. Also, we're so spread out (esp. in Texas). England is so much more compact. I doubt it's feasible economically to drive all over the metro Austin area to deliver groceries.
Albertson's in Utah will let you shop online and they'll have you're groceries bagged and ready to go at a certain time. You just drive up and they'll load your car. I think this was an extra $5. A pretty reasonable alternative to grocery delivery, I think.

UK folks all have cars too!!!!!!!!!!

They just hate spending hours at the store and carrying tons of shopping.

Austin compares pretty well in size and shape to many smaller UK cities - compact centre, spread-out 'burbs and some further out.

And my sis lives wayyyy out in the English countryside!

[Trainwreck20]

There is only so much way out in the countryside in England. The population density of the country is ~30x greater than the US. Granted, there are large areas that would not need any grocery service in the US, but the density would still be greather in England. If you have high density areas that can support the bulk of the cost of delivery service, then a few way outs don't hurt the bottom line that much.

I don't think that is really the issue, though, I think it is just that more of us here in the US are impulse shoppers, or some variation of that. We don't plan that far ahead, so we wouldn't plan out our shopping ahead of time. We just end up and getting it when we think of it. Very inefficient, but probably just the way it is.

I think either Randalls or Albertson's here had curbside pick up recently, or I think I saw a flyer. I think it was Randalls, actually. The fee was not that much, but I would then be paying their higher prices, too, and that was the killer .

[southdown]

I think in the UK the supermarket business very different - customers want high quality food at low prices and competition is really fierce so the stores that offer the delivery service do it as a 'loss leader' - they don't make much money on the service but they keep the customers loyal to the store.

Anyway, think we are losing the thread here!

[atxcio]

Originally Posted by jclAustin

I haven't seen anyone mention Sun Harvest yet. The one I go to is off Anderson Lane near Mopac, and another one is listed off Lamar.

I've been to Sun Harvest a couple of times. The one on Lamar is south, at Lamar & 290. I think it's the Brodie Oaks shopping center.

I wondered how they stayed in business. Just small, I guess. Not many people seem to know about them, although I remember they used to run ads in the paper sometime... the problem for me was that I'd always need something they didn't have, and would end up making another trip somewhere else. Sun Harvest would do a lot better if they were in some of few actual walking areas of Austin -- off Anderson and at Brodie Oaks, it's not like that. Maybe in Hyde Park, SoCo, or downtown they would flourish as a small neighborhood option.

[socrates1234]

Originally Posted by txstate

I love HEB it is the best grocery store chain in America in my opinion.

Isn't "loving" HEB akin to loving WALMART, or STARBUCKS? I mean what's to love if they are the only game in town? Sort of like loving Putin or Chavez.

http://www.angryconservative.com/home/Portals/0/Blog/Russia/Putin_Russia_Missile_Returns.jpg (broken link)

[socrates1234]

Originally Posted by Mudd

I'm just not impressed overall with HEB - the quality of human I see working there is horrid (especially the HEB off 29 and I35, which is like stepping into a third world country). I came from Arizona, and possibly the only good thing about Tucson was that there were several grocery stores to choose from at any one time, all within about 10 minutes of anywhere I lived there. We had Fry's (Kroger in Dallas), Bashas's (local chain), Safeway (Randall's), Albertsons, WalMart, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and others. Here, we have HEB locally (and by locally, I mean within 20 miles) and if you want to drive a ways (in our case, Cedar Park from Georgetown), Randall's. All of the local chains are WAY over crowded and even a basic trip (milk, cereal, eggs) usually takes the better part of 30-45 minutes, where the same trip for us in AZ took 10.

I'm hoping someone here knows of a plan to either introduce more competition here or at least more stores here in Austin.

I like that phrase "quality of human". LOL! Didn't spock say that on Star Trek sometime, before he beamed up, per intelligent life on earth or such? I agree that the quality of "human" leaves much to be desired today, particularly the bepedal variety working at H-E-B.