
How H-E-B planned for the pandemic - parkaboy
https://www.texasmonthly.com/food/heb-prepared-coronavirus-pandemic/
======
throwaway5752
_" Justen Noakes: So when did we start looking at the coronavirus? Probably
the second week in January, when it started popping up in China as an issue.
We’ve got interests in the global sourcing world, and we started getting
reports on how it was impacting things in China, so we started watching it
closely at that point. We decided to take a harder look at how to implement
the plan we developed in 2009 into a tabletop exercise. On February 2, we
dusted it off and compared the plan we had versus what we were seeing in
China, and started working on step one pretty heavily."_

Read the article. It is rage-inducing how much better a single grocer did than
the federal government with all of its resources. January. Talking with
counterparts in China. Executing on existing disaster plans (federal response
had one, but ignored it [https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/25/trump-
coronavirus-n...](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/25/trump-coronavirus-
national-security-council-149285)).

~~~
chrisco255
The competence of private companies in the U.S. shouldn't enrage you, that's
one of the U.S.'s strengths.

~~~
joe_the_user
I don't think the GP is enraged that there are competent private sector
actors. I'd guess they're enraged that this competence can't be transferred to
the places where it could matter 10x or 100x more. I feel kind of similarly.

An obvious example is that the president could have picked a highly competent,
non-partisan manager as the head of his coronavirus team. Regardless of his
competence, Vice President Pence is clearly a polarizing figure without a
track record of dealing with crises of this scale.

This crisis could really benefit from a highly competent manager who could
bust heads and sweep away bureaucratic hurdles. But that person would need to
be someone honestly trusted by all stakeholders. We're seeing lots of actors
maneuvering to gain ideological advantage even in the midst of these terrible
events (shame on them). I don't even know if such a person exists any more but
their non-existence would mean the US is in for serious trouble.

~~~
smallnamespace
The public sector also has a fixed pay scale for seniority that tops out
around 160k a year salary.

We could pay government employees more, but then voters would complain.

------
smacktoward
The interesting bit here: this is a company that has a full-time Director of
Emergency Preparedness. They've had plans for dealing with a pandemic flu
outbreak on the books since the bird flu outbreak of 2005. So when it actually
happened, they could just pick up those plans and run with them.

This is remarkable because it's hard to imagine most American companies, which
are always looking to squeeze out a little more profit to juice the quarterly
report, keeping someone on staff whose full-time job is to plan for what seem
in good times like extremely remote contingencies. H-E-B, notably, is
privately held.

~~~
gfisher
What's even more interesting to me is that HEB has a chief medical officer on
staff at all times as well.

~~~
leetrout
I dig this. If I were ever blessed with the opportunity to run a private,
profitable company these are the types of people I would want to hire and
retain. Building a company with a slice of my citizens. My local food
distribution company had the volunteer fire chief on payroll in a town that
couldn't afford to pay a salary for a full time chief. I think it was a great
civic service to let him leave work when we had calls during the day.

Some day...

------
heyflyguy
On Monday I realized we needed to restock our own shelves for this week.
Nothing in large quantities, just trying to be a good citizen. I went to Tom
Thumb and they were sold out of most necessity items. Same at Wal Mart. Same
at Kroger. I went to HEB and bought a week's worth of everything I needed
except eggs which they were sold out of.

HEB, Dr. Pepper and Whataburger are Texas treasures as far as I'm concerned.

~~~
techsupporter
What sucks is the last two aren't "Texan" and haven't been for a while. The
original Dr Pepper company hasn't been owned by a Texas firm for decades and
Dr Pepper Snapple sued their last iconic bottler, Dublin Dr Pepper, nearly out
of existence, but definitely out of bottling cane sugar Dr Pepper, eight years
ago. And two years back, the Hobson family cashed in and sold a majority of
Whataburger to a private equity firm out of Illinois.

I wonder how much longer the Butt (yes, really) family will keep hold of
H-E-B.

~~~
js2
If you're ever looking for a cherry cola replacement, Cheerwine in glass
bottles is delicious. I have no idea how widely distributed it is outside of
NC.

~~~
JBlue42
Great rec. I always joke with folks that NC has great food and drinks, it's
just that they might end up killing you - Krispy Kreme, Bojangles, Cheerwine,
and barbecue. I guess Texas Pete wouldn't really hurt anyone :)

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adrianmonk
Several days back, they put out a video to try to discourage panic buying by
reassuring customers they have plenty of everything in their warehouse:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7hCw5Q8qGw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7hCw5Q8qGw)

I enjoyed watching the video just because it gives an idea how big one of
these company's warehouses is. (Best view starts about 0m55s.) Those are some
tall shelves, and there are a lot of rows of them.

They're supplying probably millions of people with food, so it makes sense,
but I still found the visual impact interesting.

~~~
mc32
What I don’t get is people hoarding perishables. Like what is your plan? Have
it, is that the plan, have it?

At least TP or water have a long shelflife, but (regular) milk and eggs???

~~~
aidos
Eggs last quite a long time. Not that it worries me, my hens laid their first
egg today! Believe it or not, people in the Uk actually panic purchased
chickens this week.

~~~
yardie
American eggs have a relatively short shelflife. In order to make it look more
marketable they wash and bleach the protective coating. A natural egg should
be brown but in America they are all white. If you buy your eggs from a farm
you're fine to leave it in the pantry. If you buy it from an American
supermarket you'll need to keep it in the fridge.

~~~
learc83
>A natural egg should be brown but in America they are all white.

That is incorrect. Different hens lay different colored eggs.

~~~
DanBC
Yes. The shell colour is genetic.
[https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/why_are_chicken_eggs_different...](https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/why_are_chicken_eggs_different_colors)

Also, the thing farmers do have control over is the colour of the yolk.

You can buy Egg Yolk Color Charts:
[http://www.robotmation.co.jp/keiranycceng.htm](http://www.robotmation.co.jp/keiranycceng.htm)

This article talks about it a bit more:
[http://blog.chickenwaterer.com/2013/03/influencing-egg-
yolk-...](http://blog.chickenwaterer.com/2013/03/influencing-egg-yolk-
color.html)

~~~
aidos
Even weirder, if a chicken has white earlobes, it probably lays white eggs.
Not always, but mostly (apparently).

------
yourapostasy
Check out the city-oriented forums around the Net for Texas cities. I just
sampled cities as diverse as El Paso, San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, and
Austin, and the article doesn't do justice to how fervently Texans appreciate
H-E-B, and how much the company shows its appreciation to its customers. Some
quick Googling around in past disasters shows this is a love story that
stretches back decades. Costco and H-E-B are possibly this generation's
Nordstrom's story.

~~~
bobbiechen
>Costco and H-E-B are possibly this generation's Nordstrom's story.

Can you elaborate on what this "Nordstrom's story" means? Didn't find anything
on a quick search.

~~~
function_seven
Nordstrom was (still is?) notorious for their customer service. Taking
anything back, helping customers with whatever requests they had, and
generally going much further than a reasonable company would.

[https://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/blog/retail_radar/2...](https://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/blog/retail_radar/2012/09/nordstrom-
tales-of-legendary-customer.html)

(The tire story is half-true it turns out. Nordstrom didn't just occupy a
former tire store location, they bought out the company that sold the tires.)

------
gwern
> Craig Boyan: We’ve been working very hard right now to deliver meat and
> poultry and eggs to our stores. We’re accelerating opening a new warehouse
> in Houston that was due a few months later. We’re taking some of our
> warehouses in the state and transitioning them over to serving just meat,
> because we’re seeing such significant demand for meat, poultry, and eggs.
> We’re still having a real hard time sourcing eggs. We had big loads in the
> last few days, and they’ve been scooped up as soon as they hit the shelves,
> so we’re working very hard with egg suppliers to see where we can get
> additional eggs. But our meat plant is running 24/7—we have our own meat
> plants here. They normally don’t go 24/7, but we’ve focused them down to
> serving the top fifty items out of our meat plants; they normally carry
> several hundreds. [Focusing on top items] means fewer changeover delays, and
> it allows us to ship significantly more meat. We’re seeing those kinds of
> moves across the board as we look to ramp up volume in a rapid way.

One interesting thing about disasters and wars is the ways in which they point
out (if only by subtraction) how the world spends its capabilities and
resources during peacetime. In this case, what HEB is pointing out is 'the
cost of variety': by offering hundreds of slightly different meat products,
HEB is able to manufacture a lot less total than it would if it focused on a
few products and could scale them & get economies of scale / experience curves
([http://www.overcomingbias.com/2014/02/what-cost-
variety.html](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2014/02/what-cost-variety.html)).
Similarly, one can see this with any retailer like Aldi or Apple which makes a
point of having as few distinct units as possible.

This massive societal loss is particularly disconcerting when you note how
rarely the different varieties ever actually differ in a noticeable way (I've
done this with many food staples), and in some cases are literally the same
product in different labeling (for price discrimination); they don't exist
because of any actual need for such specialization, but because they can and
they are useful for rich First Worlders to help signal & consume an identity.
But when the rubber hits the road, no one _really_ needs those hundreds of
varieties of slightly different meat products, and 50 works fine.

~~~
nicoburns
What's been amazing to me about this shutdown is how little of our
population's work is actually required. We have key workers only working
and... we still have everything we really need.

Ok, so some of that work would be missed over longer timescales, but I still
feel like there's a lot of wasted busywork.

~~~
stuartc23
you're amazed that people have interests besides their basic needs?

~~~
gwern
Are even basic needs met...? To put it a little acerbically: what is more
valuable, global ventilator & mask stockpiles - or having in your grocery
store 6 varieties of applesauce (which all taste the same) instead of 5
varieties (which all taste the same)?

------
mimixco
I shop HEB and I noticed they were ahead of this thing weeks ago. Their
delivery service is terrific and, though quantities are limited and deliveries
have to be scheduled several days in advance, you can still buy everything.

The article doesn't mention the huge food bank donations the company has made
during the crisis. HEB is a good corporate citizen and a great place to shop.
As the story says, thank an HEB employee for everything they're doing right
now.

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mbrd
I've just got back from doing an HEB shop about 10 minutes ago, our first shop
since the crisis full hit the USA. It was surprisingly pleasant!

There was a short queue to get in (~5 people stood 6 feet apart), but once
inside there were very few customers compared to any other time I've been in
the store. I got everything that was on my shopping list.

Of the things that I saw labelled as limited to a certain number per
transaction, toilet paper was the only one that was completely out of stock (I
didn't check hand sanitizer, but assume it was too). I got eggs, milk etc with
no problems.

I spoke to the cashier and they said toilet paper sells out by 10am most days.

~~~
starpilot
I'm in Seattle, and the grocery stores here are almost exactly in the same
state. 90% back to normal. Just no one's posting on social media the full
shelves now.

~~~
empath75
It wasn’t a panic. People were rationally stock piling so they would have to
make fewer trips to the store later.

Now that they’ve stocked up, they’re not going to the store.

~~~
Tempest1981
Someone compared it to preparing for a big snowstorm.

------
PTOB
After moving from Texas years ago, the emptiest hole in my life is still
H-E-B.

~~~
skunkworker
I miss their Hill Country Fare store brand and their meat department

~~~
Rapzid
Oh man, that location at 1604 and Bulverde has a legit Texas BBQ attached; you
can smell the wood smoke when you get out of your car in the parking lot.
Amazing.

------
lonelappde
Texas Monthly writes great longform articles, thorough and informative and
without the heartstring manipulating hype usually seen in magazines.

------
totablebanjo
Putting aside the awful human toll... I’m looking forward to reading and
hearing from demand planners/time series forecasters about how they responded.
Both in terms of updating models as well and how they communicated within
their companies. One idea to alleviate the future forecasting challenges raise
from this would be to add an explanatory variable/flag this time period.
Another challenge will be if there are aftershocks and waves of social
distancing required which could lead to more panic buying.

------
DoreenMichele
Previous article about how Waffle House handles supply chain issues in the
face of disasters. It's practices are so good, the federal government uses the
Waffle House Index to help gauge impact of disasters.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15105662](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15105662)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffle_House_Index](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffle_House_Index)

~~~
yankeehue
[https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/25/business/coronavirus-
waffle-h...](https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/25/business/coronavirus-waffle-house-
trnd/index.html)

~~~
DoreenMichele
Yes, I'm aware.

My best understanding is that current Waffle House closures have nothing to do
with supply chain problems and are mostly due to state or local restrictions
on venues like restaurants. Many places are insisting that takeout is fine,
but dine in is unacceptable (and I don't disagree with that).

Complying with the law to contain the pandemic in no way tarnishes their track
record for having an amazingly robust supply chain system.

------
rckoepke
Staff at HEB have repeatedly told me they're not allowed to wear masks even if
they have their own.

HEB has also failed to implement a one person per cart policy like Aldi. The
lines out front are dense, like going into a sports arena, not 6' spaced
between people [I see the signs painted on the ground in the article, but I
haven't seen those at any of the 4 HEB's I go to regularly].

They also don't limit capacity except to the legal fire marshal limit. Some of
the other grocery stores around Houston have limited capacity to 25% of
normal, so that everyone has plenty of space inside the store.

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bdcravens
We went to HEB a couple of days ago. There was no toilet paper, but plenty of
meat, milk, eggs, etc. A trip to Target a few days prior found a store deplete
of all of the above.

~~~
xur17
In general, I think stores are getting better at handling the demand, and most
people have stocked up at this point. I went to Kroger last night, and they
were low on chicken, but had plenty of everything else I was looking for. In
fact, they had _more_ than normal of some items.

~~~
bdcravens
At HEB they had a few seemingly unrelated items up front, where they just
dropped off a full pallet.

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Rapzid
Would entertain working at H-E-B if I left startups just based on their
reputation.

~~~
uberduper
They were hiring a lot for their digital teams in downtown Austin recently.
The location is a non-starter for me, otherwise...

------
ausjke
H-E-B is great for me as a texan, can't live without it. Also very active in
public donations etc.

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el_don_almighty
Having moved away from the Austin area to Illinois, all I can say is...man I
miss H-E-B

~~~
chiph
I moved back to North Carolina after 10 years in Austin, and I miss H-E-B as
well. Harris Teeter used to be the "high end" store here (before Whole Foods
arrived) and while I was gone they were bought by Kroger. The customer
experience has gotten significantly worse. I'd love it if H-E-B could expand
to the Carolinas and bring good tortillas here.

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roel_v
How much more expensive is this grocery chain compared to others, if anything?

~~~
hebfan
It's not. There are some HEB locations that are better outfitted and have lots
of ritsy items, but others with more staples and concrete floors that focus on
lower-income communities. (The way they adapt to neighborhoods is pretty neat.
Their downmarket stores seem utilitarian, not run down.) They are price-
competitive with mainstream stores on the whole, not Whole Foods etc.

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justlexi93
So a Texas grocery chain was more prepared than this administration. Good to
know.

