[HN Gopher] How H-E-B planned for the pandemic
___________________________________________________________________
How H-E-B planned for the pandemic
Author : parkaboy
Score : 147 points
Date : 2020-03-26 15:52 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.texasmonthly.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.texasmonthly.com)
| PTOB wrote:
| After moving from Texas years ago, the emptiest hole in my life
| is still H-E-B.
| skunkworker wrote:
| I miss their Hill Country Fare store brand and their meat
| department
| dustincoates wrote:
| And their tortillas. Can't forget those.
| heyflyguy wrote:
| 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.
| uberduper wrote:
| Whataburger is no longer TX owned. :(
| bigtex wrote:
| Don't forget Blue Bell.
| StillBored wrote:
| Or shiner which made a reasonable beer when everyone else was
| trying to be bud. I thought they had gotten absorbed, but no
| they are apparently still independent.
| techsupporter wrote:
| 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.
| smacktoward wrote:
| 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.
| superquest wrote:
| > 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
|
| HEB is privately owned and run by the owners. Those are very
| different incentives than public or VC-backed ventures.
| gfisher wrote:
| What's even more interesting to me is that HEB has a chief
| medical officer on staff at all times as well.
| theNJR wrote:
| They were by far my favorite retailer to work with when I was
| CMO at Quest Nutrition.
| tbyehl wrote:
| Everyone operating at scale in the food supply chain needs an
| executive with medical/scientific expertise. The risks from
| foodborne illnesses are real.
|
| It feels like an eternity ago but there were several major
| food scares, recalls, and deaths, from contaminated
| vegetables last year.
| leetrout wrote:
| 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...
| worldsoup wrote:
| also important that this is a private company that does not
| face the same quarterly earnings pressure as a publicly traded
| company
| ranrotx wrote:
| Another thing worth noting: HEB is privately (family, I
| believe) owned. The difference is night and day between their
| stores/employees and those of the competing grocer in my area
| that is owned by private equity.
| dopamean wrote:
| Which could explain the lack of interest in squeezing every
| bit of profit out of it. For them their name is literally on
| the business so being prepared to do the right thing is
| important to them.
| notJim wrote:
| I don't think contingency planning is actually that unusual for
| large companies. I did Google searches for "$groceryChain
| director of contingency planning" and found that many major
| chains have them (via LinkedIn). Also found some for hotel
| chains, etc.
| criddell wrote:
| Is contingency planning the same thing as emergency
| preparedness?
| kortilla wrote:
| Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contingency_plan
| criddell wrote:
| From that page:
|
| > A contingency plan is a plan devised for an outcome
| other than in the usual (expected) plan.
|
| That sounds a lot broader than emergency preparedness.
| eterm wrote:
| If you're a big company then busuiness continuity plans are
| required to get those magic ISO numbers that enterprise clients
| and insurers like to see.
| tnorthcutt wrote:
| It probably doesn't hurt that the Texas coast regularly gets
| hit by hurricanes, so they deal with emergencies (albeit on a
| smaller scale than this) somewhat frequently.
| Kalium wrote:
| Even their HQ is in an area that regularly floods. Disasters
| are a somewhat regular event for them.
| mchristen wrote:
| HEB is routinely one of the first on site with stockpiles of
| water and essentials ready to go during disasters.
|
| I'm so happy they have my back.
| mbrd wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Someone compared it to preparing for a big snowstorm.
| skunkworker wrote:
| I just shopped at my local Trader Joe's here in Utah and they
| had pretty much everything back in normal stock amounts.
| Costco though still was out of 5 or 6 staples
| [deleted]
| mimixco wrote:
| 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.
| aka1234 wrote:
| Moved from central Texas to Dallas about a year ago. Wife drives
| an hour out of her way just to shop at HEB because fuck Kroger.
|
| P.S. Dallas is a shithole.
| bdcravens wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| _" 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...).
| chrisco255 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| I'm obviously enraged by the incompetence of the federal
| response, not the strength of H-E-B's.
| heliodor wrote:
| You get what you pay for, basically. If governments were to
| pay top dollar and actually fire incompetent people, I'm
| sure our world would be a much better place.
| jonfw wrote:
| That's government work for you
| nicoburns wrote:
| Not everywhere though. Governments in Singapore, Japan,
| South Korea amongst other places have had an excellent
| response.
| jonfw wrote:
| I feel that the successes in those countries result more
| from their cultures than their governments.
|
| One of the common criticisms of those countries is the
| singular culture that creates social pressure. Social
| pressure can go a long way in these sorts of events.
|
| Taking these tiny, mono-cultural, rich countries and
| comparing them to the world's leading superpower does not
| make a strong argument.
| kube-system wrote:
| The social difference is only relevant in that it results
| in a different governing style. US style lock-downs have
| so far been very voluntary in nature compared to what
| several other countries are doing.
| anbop wrote:
| Singapore is anything but a mono-cultural country and is
| only recently rich. Basically through extreme government
| competence they made themselves rich and yes, their
| society definitely has Chinese at the top but unlike the
| US, the society is not completely riven by racial strife.
| nicoburns wrote:
| How do you explain the early government-enforced
| shutdowns, and expansive testing programs? I think the
| response from the general population has _also_ been
| better in some of these countries, but there is a marked
| difference in the government responses.
| azmodeus wrote:
| Comparing a large multicultural richer country does seem
| weird.
|
| Indeed a tiny 126 million soul tiny country can not be
| compared with a country of 330 million souls. Also the
| USA having 1.5x the GDP / Capita does make Japan the
| richer country.
|
| These countries unlike the USA have more economically and
| socially interventionist governments. I do wonder if the
| culture of Germany is closer to Japan or USA. To tackle a
| pandemic do you need more leadership or culture?
|
| I mean beyond national security where is USA leadership?
| lonelappde wrote:
| > the USA having 1.5x the GDP / Capita does make Japan
| the richer country.
|
| ???
| malandrew wrote:
| > The competence of private companies shouldn't enrage you,
| that's one of the their strengths.
|
| When you have to compete, you have to develop competence to
| survive. Only those that don't have to compete (monopolies)
| or those that survive despite incompetence (bailouts) are the
| exceptions.
| [deleted]
| worldsoup wrote:
| need to throw the federal bureaucracy into the 'don't have
| to compete to survive bucket'
| pjscott wrote:
| They fall under the category of monopolies.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > The competence of private companies in the U.S. shouldn't
| enrage you, that's one of the U.S.'s strengths.
|
| That's a misleading and false generalization. You can't
| cherrypick one of the better prepared companies to make a
| statement about companies in general. Especially when there's
| nonsense all over the news about other companies like
| GameStop and Guitar Center claiming to be essential retail
| against all reason:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/business/coronavirus-
| esse....
| kortilla wrote:
| How is finding an anecdote a invalidate a generalization?
| The majority of the most powerful global corporations are
| US companies. They don't (in general) get that way by being
| incompetent.
| Chai-T-Rex wrote:
| You can't support a point about private companies in the
| US in general with a point solely about powerful global
| corporations that are US companies.
| giggles_giggles wrote:
| This is interesting because the GP, I think, didn't intend
| to say "private" to mean "privately held", but I think it's
| worthwhile to note that GameStop and Guitar Center are
| publicly traded while H-E-B is still family owned.
|
| H-E-B does a lot of things that are more benevolent than
| the kind of behavior that we're used to seeing from
| publicly-traded organizations and I can't help but wonder
| if the private ownership (truly private, as opposed to
| publicly-traded) has something to do with that.
|
| H-E-B is one of the things I will really miss if I ever
| have to leave Texas. They're always there any time there is
| any kind of disaster, to provide relief. I've even heard
| that they treat their software engineers well (they bought
| Favor). They're really a one-of-a-kind company. I hope they
| never IPO.
| Reedx wrote:
| The failure goes well beyond just the federal government too.
|
| One example being NYC leaders and even health officials
| encouraging New Yorkers go participate in parades and other
| large gatherings through Feb and even into March, with messages
| of defiance against Coronavirus concerns:
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/wesyang/status/124303311804449997...
|
| Edit: Removed ventilator comment as that specific claim seems
| to be misleading, and it's not something particular to NY. Many
| governments weren't prepared for a surge.
|
| The U.S. as a whole had plenty of advanced warning about
| ventilator[1] and pandemic preparedness[2].
|
| 1. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/disaster-medicine-
| an...
|
| 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Af6b_wyiwI
| ardy42 wrote:
| > New York was warned years ago that they didn't have enough
| ventilators and had the opportunity to stock up, but chose
| not to.
|
| That's misleading.
|
| https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/25/donald-
| tru...:
|
| > A 2015 New York state report said that in the case of a
| "severe" pandemic, the state would be short about 16,000
| ventilators during the peak week. _But the report did not
| recommend buying 16,000 ventilators_ [emphasis mine], and did
| not indicate whether the state was at a fiscal position to
| purchase them.
|
| > The state did not plan to increase its ventilator stockpile
| because it anticipated that in the event of a severe crisis,
| there would be shortage of trained staff to operate them and
| demand would outweigh any emergency stockpile.
|
| > The report said the state had to balance the likely
| ventilator shortage with the need for adequate funding for
| current and ongoing health care expenses.
|
| And even if New York had bought them, _they 'd still be
| significantly short_. Apparently current projections say
| they'll need 30,000 (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/24/gov-
| cuomo-says-new-york-need...).
| anbop wrote:
| I'm sure there are 16,000 people that would be thankful
| that you were 14,000 ventilators short instead of 30,000.
| lonelappde wrote:
| The Health Commissioner on Feb 9 was still pretty early.
| That's 8 weeks ago, ancient history in this pandemic.
|
| On Feb 25, over 2 weeks CDC said covid-19 was detected in the
| US (from travelers back from Wuhan) and wasn't a risk for
| spreading among the general public.
|
| The flu is here every year but we don't cancel parades.
|
| De Blasio on Mar 2 was a lot later.
| mc32 wrote:
| If it's any comfort few governments have shown the same amount
| of forethought and attention to detail.
|
| Singapore has done well, but besides them there have been lots
| of missteps all over.
| azepoi wrote:
| South Korea, Germany and Taiwan have done well. Most other
| countries really mishandled it. Denial until the last minute
| with no preparedness even when neighbour countries were
| already in dire situations.
| screye wrote:
| Must mention India in some sense too.
|
| Given the scale of difficulty, the country has moved
| swiftly.
|
| It is yet to be seen if it is even possible to organize a
| shutdown the solve this problem, at India's scale. But,
| even the naysayers have acknowledged that in this case Modi
| made good decisions.
| satya71 wrote:
| Na, they're reacting too late. Given India's size and
| lack of healthcare infrastructure, they should have
| shutdown international travel and tested exhaustively
| early on. They let it get out of control and now are
| imposing a haphazard shutdown. The shutdown is needed,
| but there are too many reports of poor people going
| hungry for days.
| malandrew wrote:
| Singapore is tiny. It's an area 6 times the size of San
| Francisco with a border with passport control.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| The US has what is generally considered the worst COVID-19
| response among developed nations.
| something539953 wrote:
| Italy and Spain are not developed countries?
| kube-system wrote:
| The US is going to blow past Italy and Spain in a couple
| of days.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| The US passed Italy (and China) today. And Spain
| previously. Although only for cases, not deaths.
|
| https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
| lonelappde wrote:
| Even compared to China Communist Party who tried to
| suppress their own doctor's evidence of it and let it
| spread to the whole world
|
| And Italy, where 1 in 10K have already died?
| malandrew wrote:
| On a per capita basis, the US is at 20% of where Italy is.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| Italy is also
|
| A. Doing far more testing
|
| B. Further along the pandemic curve
|
| Give it another week or two and you'll see how bad things
| are really going to be.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Generally considered among who? Epidemiologists? Public
| health officials? Anonymous commenters on message boards?
| res0nat0r wrote:
| I'm going with "everyone" now that the USA is #1 at
| something as of today: The most diagnosed cases of any
| country in the world, even China.
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| I don't think the US as a whole, NY seems to have its
| finger out. Testing really well too.
| _delirium wrote:
| NY has done more widespread testing than most states, but
| lost a lot of time ramping up its hospital capacity
| (beds, staffing, and equipment). Cuomo issued an order to
| do that only on Feburary 26. I could imagine not wanting
| to preemptively take stronger measures like turning
| convention centers into makeshift hospitals, but not
| clear why they weren't at least increasing stocks of PPE
| and generally getting better prepared for a possible
| influx of cases.
| satya71 wrote:
| What about Bill de Blasio refused to shutdown restaurants
| and pubs over St Patrick's day, because "He wasn't there
| yet"
| heliodor wrote:
| Good response now but slow to pull the trigger on the
| lockdown. People seem to have forgotten that already!
| Precious days were wasted before Cuomo finally called a
| lockdown.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| Try winding down a city of 8 million in one day without
| instilling fear, panic, a run on groceries, etc. Taking
| three days to slowly get everyone working from home is
| sound especially when you're just starting to get a grip
| on the situation. I'm biased though, living in Queens.
| throwaway32120 wrote:
| Yep. Just a week ago Cuomo was shut down the idea of
| shelter in place when de Blasio (who had been dragging
| his feet as well) was suggesting it[1]. This was a day
| after the Bay Area health officers announced a shelter in
| place order. He only relented when things really spun out
| of control.
|
| The fact that people like Cuomo are now being praised for
| the way they handled this suggests that we aren't going
| to learn the lessons we need to.
|
| [1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/17/politics/bill-de-
| blasio-andre...
| wahern wrote:
| The U.S. Federal government's response is better
| characterized as willful incompetence bordering on
| maliciousness, than a misstep. NY Governor Cuomo and NYC
| Mayor De Blasio deserve special mention for cynically playing
| a game of chicken with each other, together with Trump, and
| the three of them with COVID-19; the losers are the poor
| people of NYC.
|
| I think the San Francisco Bay Area counties did a pretty
| decent job (not S. Korea or Singapore, but that's a high bar)
| and I'm optimistic that they've significantly bent the curve
| (that's what I see plotting the data), but can't be very
| confident until after this weekend.
| draw_down wrote:
| This is an ad.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| 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://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffle_House_Index
| yankeehue wrote:
| https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/25/business/coronavirus-waffle-h...
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| 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.
| lonelappde wrote:
| Texas Monthly writes great longform articles, thorough and
| informative and without the heartstring manipulating hype usually
| seen in magazines.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| 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
|
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| graton wrote:
| Yep. In the US, eggs in the refrigerator should be good for
| 4-5 weeks after the listed expiration date on the package.
| yardie wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| >A natural egg should be brown but in America they are
| all white.
|
| That is incorrect. Different hens lay different colored
| eggs.
| aidos wrote:
| Yup, can confirm. Our first egg is from our Pheasant
| Leghorn, which lays white eggs.
| DanBC wrote:
| Yes. The shell colour is genetic. https://www.canr.msu.ed
| u/news/why_are_chicken_eggs_different...
|
| 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
|
| This article talks about it a bit more:
| http://blog.chickenwaterer.com/2013/03/influencing-egg-
| yolk-...
| aidos wrote:
| Even weirder, if a chicken has white earlobes, it
| probably lays white eggs. Not always, but mostly
| (apparently).
| empath75 wrote:
| It's actually because American eggs are washed that you
| have to put them in the fridge.
| gwern wrote:
| To eat first, obviously. Delay being forced back onto the
| nonperishables as long as possible.
| stagger87 wrote:
| You can freeze milk and eggs for like a year no problem.
| StillBored wrote:
| If the s __t really hits the fan you won 't be able to run
| that freezer for long unless you also have sufficient solar
| and an ability to run it without grid tie.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I never had any luck unfreezing milk - the water and cream
| unfroze at different rate, and it ended up weird.
| effingwewt wrote:
| You can just shake it vigorously to reconstitute it. More
| places than you may think freeze their milk until they
| are ready to use it. I personally find that low fat or
| skim milk takes to unfreezing better.
| totablebanjo wrote:
| 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.
| yourapostasy wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| >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.
| yourapostasy wrote:
| Nordstrom a decade ago was very well-publicized for its
| customer service. Example write-up [1]. Could all be PR-
| drummed-up. But from first-hand experience, at least in my
| experience they were customer-focused.
|
| [1] https://sharpencx.com/blog/nordstrom-customer-service/
| function_seven wrote:
| 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.
| ..
|
| (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.)
| kodablah wrote:
| Aside from a couple on the far west side of the metroplex, HEB
| hasn't really moved into the DFW area yet (Central Market
| notwithstanding)
| el_don_almighty wrote:
| Having moved away from the Austin area to Illinois, all I can say
| is...man I miss H-E-B
| gwern wrote:
| > 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). 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| you're amazed that people have interests besides their basic
| needs?
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