{"id":456113,"date":"2026-10-04T11:44:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T11:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/456113\/"},"modified":"2026-10-04T11:44:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T11:44:09","slug":"first-8-austin-h-e-b-stores-kick-off-our-series-on-the-chains-central-texas-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/456113\/","title":{"rendered":"First 8 Austin H-E-B stores kick off our series on the chain’s Central Texas history"},"content":{"rendered":"

When did your neighborhood H-E-B<\/a> open and, over the years, how did it grow? What are its core attributes and culture nowadays?<\/p>\n

These questions will guide our new series, “Central Texas H-E-B Histories,” informed by articles in newspaper archives, city directories, store visits, crowdsourcing and personal interviews. Over the next months, we’ll roll out short chronicles of the more than 50 H-E-B grocery stores <\/a>in the Austin area.<\/p>\n

We’ll unveil them three or four at a time – like the popular “Jim Duncan’s Austin<\/a>” series – organized from the start chronologically by opening dates. Duncan’s thematically presented Austin business histories will resume in these pages as well.<\/p>\n

How did H-E-B spread?\"The<\/p>\n

The H-E-B store in Frisco was the grocery chain’s first H-E-B brand store to open in the Dallas-Fort Worth market. (Lola Gomez \/ Dallas Morning News)<\/p>\n

The June 26, 1950, Austin Statesman, the city’s evening paper, reported that the chain entered the market in 1938 by purchasing four Piggly Wiggly<\/a> stores, which were converted to the H-E-B name gradually.<\/p>\n

At the time, the chain was anchored in Corpus Christi<\/a>. It wasn’t until 1985 that Charles Butt moved the company’s headquarters to San Antonio<\/a>, a better launching pad for reaching more territory in Texas and Mexico, where it opened its first store in 1997.<\/p>\n

From South Texas, H-E-B reached Houston<\/a> with its smaller Pantry Food stores in 1992, then officially arrived with large-format stores – and its Central Market<\/a> brand – in 2001. After testing the Pantry Foods concept in North and East Texas during the 1980s, the company introduced Central Market to North Texas in 2001, before opening its first official full-sized H-E-B there in 2022. (Yes, that recently.)<\/p>\n

The iconic chain has still not reached El Paso and much of West Texas other than Midland, Odessa and Lubbock<\/a>. In addition, spots in East Texas – where Brookshire’s reigns – and North Texas – even within the city limits of Dallas – are still without an H-E-B.<\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

H-E-B leadership routinely declines to reveal its expansion plans<\/a> until they are completely settled. Nevertheless, they study each region carefully and start buying promising properties years, sometimes decades in advance.<\/p>\n

Where were the first H-E-B stores in Austin? Are any of those still open?<\/p>\n

In 2018, we spent some time in the reading room at the Austin History Center. There, we pulled city and phone directories from the late 1930s through the late 1940s<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We were dazzled by the number of listed markets, some just a block or so from the next shopping option. A few were part of national, regional or local groups, such as A&P, Red & White or Checkered Front. Others bore cool names, such as New China (two locales), Handy Hut Food Pantry and Achilles IGA.<\/p>\n

Until 1945, however, we found no listing for an H-E-B, but rather six for Piggly Wiggly. The year the war ended, the Piggly Wiggly brand had disappeared. Instead, H-E-B listed two supermarkets – larger and more varied grocery stores devoted primarily to self-service shopping – and six smaller, more traditional stores:<\/p>\n

Supermarket No. 1:<\/p>\n

2014 S. Congress Ave. Now: refurbished condos across Crockett Street from the Meteor<\/a> coffee, cafe and bicycle repair shops. (It had moved from 1502 S. Congress Ave. sometime in the early 1940s.) Neither of these is the address for the current, multi-level urban-style H-E-B at South Congress Avenue and Oltorf.<\/p>\n

Supermarket No. 2: 3106 Windsor Road. Now and then: Tarrytown Center<\/a>. This supermarket could not exist currently given the center’s landlord, Jeanne Crusemann Daniel, who forbids the sale of animal products.<\/p>\n

Store No. 1: 117 W. Sixth St. This handsome store <\/a>was gone by 1954, when the ultra-modern Starr Building, also known as the American National Bank Building, replaced the grocery outlet. This landmark was lovingly renovated in 2009-2010. It became the stylish “Mad Men” home of the McGarrah Jessee<\/a> marketing agency. “I happen to be one of the people who went to work at that first H-E-B on West Sixth Street,” May Smith told the Statesman. “I’m so happy you’ve found all the stores.”<\/p>\n

Store No. 2: 824 W. 12th St. Now: ACC garage. This store would have served the Old Austin, Old West Austin, Clarksville<\/a>, Judge’s Hill, Enfield, Pemberton and some University of Texas neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

Store No. 3: 601 E. Sixth St. Now: offices. The intersection of Old Sixth and Red River streets was a place where all Austin encountered each other, even in a segregated era. Just a few years later, racial lines hardened with the construction of the Interregional Highway<\/a>, eventually renamed Interstate 35<\/a> during the 1960s.<\/p>\n

Store No. 4:<\/p>\n

1405 San Jacinto Blvd. Now: Capitol complex garage. Some Austinites forget how heavily residential the areas north and east of the Texas Capitol<\/a> were before the current governmental complex and the university expanded voraciously.<\/p>\n

Store No. 5: Oddly, there was no such listing. At least not in 1945.<\/p>\n

Store No. 6: 1111 E. First St. Now: Central Health. The only H-E-B in what we think of as East Austin by the end of World War II, this store served the mixed-race neighborhoods that became primarily Hispanic by the 1950s. The grocery had been phased out by the 1990s.<\/p>\n

How can you help?<\/p>\n

Nobody knows your local H-E-B like you do. You have memorized the layout of the sections and the sequence of the aisles. You’ve got your favorite counter helpers, as well as friendly front-end checkers and sackers. Heck, you might have chatted with a manager or two over the years.<\/p>\n

Please send your thoughts about your H-E-B to mbarnes@statesman.com.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Daily Briefing from the Austin American-Statesman. Start your day with the must-read headlines from Austin’s most trusted news source.<\/a><\/p>\n

This article originally published at First 8 Austin H-E-B stores kick off our series on the chain’s Central Texas history<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When did your neighborhood H-E-B open and, over the years, how did it grow? What are its core…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":456114,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-456113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}