A recently retired H-E-B employee reveals the biggest misconceptions about the brand and its private label offerings. Here’s why she is unabashedly biased towards the Texas retailer.
TikTok creator Brittany (@briztx) posted the “very lengthy PSA” last week. “I have a confession to make,” she said. “I worked for HEB collectively for 17 years.”
Four of those she spent in-store when she was a student in high school and college. After she got her degree, she took a break for a few years, and then later returned to H-E-B where she worked in procurement and food product development.
Brittany retired from H-E-B in June of this year. Not because she didn’t love the work anymore, but because she is the survivor of two different cancers and she decided to focus on her family, which includes three young children.
“You just kind of have to take a step back and take a minute and a breather,” she said, while acknowledging that H-E-B was incredibly supportive of her during the five-year cancer battle.
Brittany’s work with the food product development team gave her an insight into how the grocer supplies the products that are sold under its private label brand names. “That’s the team that creates the products that are in the HEB, Central Market, Hill Country Fair, Higher Harvest—all the brands,” she said. “So, because of this, sure, I’m biased about HEB’s products. About the quality, the flavor, the expectations of a product on a shelf. Where I would say several other grocers don’t when it comes to their private label products.”
She acknowledged that she is “heavily biased” and said her own family members would attest to that fact. However, she said there’s a good reason for that. “You know too much about ingredients,” said Brittany. “You know too much about the effort and energy that goes into something. But also HEB cares. They care about the customer. They care about the food that they are serving to Texans. Because, ultimately, at the end of the day health and happiness is the most important. But really food insecurity is the most important and being able to afford your food.”
Then Brittany offered what she believes is the most common misconception when it comes to this topic. “Nothing upsets me more than when I hear people saying, ‘I mean, all food products are the same. They’re just slapping their name on an item,’” she said. “No, no, no. When I tell you about the caliber and expertise of the individuals working at H-E-B. It’s astounding. A lot of people don’t even know this exists. But there are food scientists that work for H-E-B. These people go to school for food development.”
She continued, “There’s food science. There’s chemical engineers that work at H-E-B. These are the incredibly talented, incredibly smart individuals who are putting products into these brands. And they’re not just slapping a label on it. There are standards. I’m not going to go into classified information, if you will, and give away all their trade secrets. But what I will just say is H-E-B is in a caliber of its own.”
She said that H-E-B has over 13 of its own manufacturing facilities. That allows it to make many of the foods it sells under its own brand names. “I think the biggest misnomer is a lot of people think Frito Lay makes HEB’s chips, and that’s not the case,” she said. “HEB has their own manufacturing facility for chips, for ice cream. These aren’t recipes that HEB reverse engineered. These are receipts that the food scientists created with help of the [research and development] teams that work at the labs.”
How does that make a difference? “When Blue Bell was off shelves and it was unsafe?” she said. “HEB stayed on. And it was safe for the customers to consume. HEB led the forefront in removing artificial flavors from their ice cream. So I think there’s just a lot that consumers don’t know. HEB is where it’s at.”
In the comments section of the video, viewers made it clear that Brittany isn’t the only one with a healthy dose of H-E-B love flowing through her veins.
“You’re making me want to leave public education and go work for H-E-B,” wrote one person.
“I drive past like 10+ stores just to get to H-E-B,” said a second viewer.
“H-E-B doesn’t care about us as customers, they care about us as people,” wrote a third person. “Their actions speak volumes: Helping the community, environment, employees, etc.
All Hip Hop contacted Brittany via TikTok comment and direct message for comment.
@briztx A very lengthy PSA that NO ONE asked for but was heavy on my heart. This is my version of a love letter to H-E-B as an ex-partner. H-E-B is always on the tips of peoples’ lips with lots of opinions and incorrect facts so just want to get a couple of things straight here! Without divulging confidential information – BOY could I go on about all the things the public has wrong. #heb #texas #food #themoreyouknow #branding @H-E-B ♬ original sound – Brittany
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