Here Everything’s Better, Assuming You Want An H-E-B And Live in Burleson

Late last night, after grocery Aldi released its list of local locations and opening dates, a Friend of Unfair Park wondered how oh how we and everyone else missed this interview with H-E-B Chairman and CEO Charles Butt that ran in the San Antonio Express-News last weekend. In it, Butt addresses that November story about the grocer’s alleged expansion into Dallas-Fort Worth and reveals that, for now, there’s just the one H-E-B planned just south of Fort Worth:

One of the new Texas H-E-B stores will be built in Burleson, just south of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, the farthest-north yet, other than the four Central Markets in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

The Dallas-Fort Worth market is not a specific target for H-E-B at the moment, Butt said, noting that H-E-B already serves about 60 percent of the Texas market.

During the next decade, though, the company might consider moving strongly into the Metroplex “if we felt we could make a contribution to the customers there,” Butt said.

Quick, someone tell the Fort Worth Business Press that Burleson location won’t be a Central Market. But I do like this theory about Charles Butt and H-E-B’s entry into the local market: “If they’re going to enter the D/FW market, they’ll do it from the south door.” Mmmm, keep talking.