HEB Improves Competitor Products

A story about how HEB, a Texas grocery chain, responded to Trader Joe's entering their market in San Antonio.

"When they heard Trader Joe's was coming to San Antonio, HEB packed up all their senior executives who were in charge of product selection, location selection, interior store experience - all that stuff. They put them on a private jet and flew them out to California and said 'Don't come back until you have the best of every single one of their products because we need to up our game.'

There's another anecdote when Walmart came to San Antonio - HEB went and lowered their profit targets because they're just like 'We're not losing to Walmart, that's just the way it's gonna work.' That all emanated from the ownership. You didn't have public stock people coming in saying 'Think quarter by quarter.' You had folks thinking 'We've been here for 70 years, how are we gonna be here for another 70 years?' My buddy works there and he said it took 10 years before people stopped referring to him as the new guy - people just stay."