H-E-B Goes Huge in Houston

H-E-B opened its highly anticipated H-E-B MacGregor Market on Dec. 18 at the intersection of North MacGregor Way and State Highway 288 in Houston. The new 90,000-square-foot store is in step with other recent openings for the San Antonio-based grocer; it features expansive shopping options, added services for convenience, quality selection and an emphasis on healthy living.

“This H-E-B store has been in the making for some time now, and we are thrilled to put our roots down on this historic corner of Houston,” Winell Herron, H-E-B group VP of public affairs, diversity and environmental affairs, said in a statement. 

MacGregor Market replaces an area H-E-B Pantry store at the corner of Old Spanish Trail and Scott Street, which closed Dec. 17. The old store was just 27,000 square feet, a smaller format with which H-E-B has struggled to succeed.

“We could not expand at that location. We didn’t own the location; we were a tenant,” H-E-B Director of Public Affairs Lisa Helfman told the Houston Business Journal.

While H-E-B entered the historic Houston market with smaller footprint stores, the company quickly realized they were too small to satisfy Houstonians, Helfman told the Journal. Similar Pantry stores around the city have been torn down to make way for larger, more traditional stores. H-E-B has several stores planned in Texas that are 130,000 square feet.

Unlike the grocer’s small-footprint stores, H-E-B MacGregor Market has all the bells and whistles. It will offer the company’s largest selection of its popular H-E-B Meal Simple heat-and-eat options; a staggering array of Texas-made products; Cooking Connection and the Showtime Kitchen, featuring live demonstrations and daily samplings; a service meat and deli departments; pharmacy; and scratch bakery and Tortilleria.

Additional highlights include a full-service seafood department with fresh fish and seafood, fresh sushi and poke bowls handmade in-store daily by Sushiya; a full-service floral department staffed with an on-site floral designer; an extensive pet department featuring fresh refrigerated selections; and a produce department offering fresh squeezed juices and freshly made guacamole.

The MacGregor Market also serves as a quality living source that supports healthy eating on a budget, the company said. The store boasts 1,500 H-E-B Organics options and H-E-B Select Ingredients, a line of store brand products that excludes unwanted ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup and artificial flavors.

Keeping with H-E-B’s focus on digital dominance, MacGregor Market will offer curbside pickup; delivery through partnerships with Favor, Shipt and Instacart; and shopping through the newly launched My H-E-B mobile app that allows customers to locate products in-store and order groceries.

The newest H-E-B even has an environmental component. Located just off the banks of Braes Bayou, H-E-B MacGregor Market is home to an active and protected wetland. Throughout construction the team made it a priority to preserve and enhance the natural habitat that borders the property along MacGregor Way, the retailer said. Visitors can enjoy sightings of Cooper’s hawks, yellow-crowned night herons, red mulberry trees and the American tree frog, to name a few, all in the center of the country’s fourth-largest city. 

“I’m humbled to serve our community with a state-of-the-art store,” said, Anika Wiley, a 22-year H-E-B veteran who will lead the store team at MacGregor Market. “We look forward to providing an outstanding shopping experience with the best H-E-B has to offer.”