HOUSTON – With the extended freeze expected next week, many are turning to grocery stores to get last-minute supplies and food to ride out the storm.
”I think at the end of the day what people know, who work for HEB, is it’s in times like this the Texans rely on us, and if they’re going to do that, then we need to be there for them,” said HEB President Scott McClelland.
McClelland said some of the most popular items are for dishes that would typically warm up a kitchen: soups, stews and the ingredients to make them. Stores like the HEB in Montrose have been packed.
“There’s a lot of energy in the store,” said HEB store leader Jeff Ditges. “Tons of people coming in and out.”
“Yesterday we shipped more cases out of our warehouses than any other day in HEB history bigger than Thanksgiving, bigger than Christmas,” McClelland said. “Of course, this weekend we have Valentine’s Day and then, of course, we have cold weather so, in the grocery business, we call this a perfect storm.”
All HEB stores will be fully staffed even for curb-side assistance and delivery services and the shelves will be full too, according to McClelland.
“One of the things that we’re anticipating is that the requests for curbside and deliveries will go up as the weather gets colder. There’s a relationship between bad weather and people wanting us to deliver to them not wanting to get out of the car. The great news is that over the course of last year, we’ve added significant capacity and can handle more than what we’ve been able to handle in the past so get online and order up, and we think we can handle almost all of the orders that come in,” McClelland said.