The H-E-B unit in Houston’s Village Plaza at Bunker Hill is a top-selling wine location with 2,500 SKUs, and the company continues to actively expand that selection. As a neighborhood’s average income increases, so does the percentage of wine sales.Ī standard location will typically carry about 1,300 wines and 750 beers, but those numbers vary significantly from one store to the next. A typical layout devotes about 60 percent of space to wine and 40 percent to beer. “My goal is to take care of every customer, whether they want a $3 bottle of wine or a $300 bottle.” Some locations see 80 percent of alcohol sales derived from beer and 20 percent from wine, but depending on the local demographics, that ratio can be flipped. “Because we sell a lot of alcohol at all different demographic levels, we tailor our selections to a location’s customer base,” Schuette says. Thanks to each store’s uniqueness, H-E-B sees nearly every type of consumer coming through its doors. “My goal is to take care of every customer, whether they want a $3 bottle of wine or a $300 bottle.” However, H-E-B says it has a couple of new stores planned for the fast-growing San Antonio market, where the company is headquartered, and it opened a new store in Midland last year after the city had grown enough to support a second location. The company currently has no stores in the El Paso market, and in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area it operates only four Central Market units. While H-E-B remains in solid growth mode, company and real estate planning require strategic thinking about which markets to enter. Houston has been the company’s largest growth market over the past decade, followed by Austin, where H-E-B is noticing an influx of people moving from the West Coast. “For example, I have about 800 wines in addition to my standard assortment, but we only sell them in certain areas across the state where demand exists.”Īs many Texas cities have seen major population booms, H-E-B has expanded right along with them. “One of the things we’re known for as a company is that we tailor each store layout and assortment-including beer and wine-to what we think is right for its specific market, from small towns to pocket neighborhoods in large cities like Houston,” Schuette says. While some stores cover 35,000 square feet and offer a more limited product selection, others can span 185,000 square feet, space and consumer demand permitting. H-E-B strives to provide a customized shopping experience at each of its locations. For his attentive dedication to the beverage alcohol category, Dan Schuette has been named a 2017 Market Watch Leader.Ĭabernet Sauvignon leads wine sales at H-E-B (Cabernet shelves pictured), though Chardonnay follows up as a close second. He oversees an eight-person management team spread over various Texas regions and roughly 180 beer and wine stewards working across 130 stores. A 21-year company veteran who’s worked in various departments, Dan Schuette currently serves as director of H-E-B’s wine and beer department, following a consolidation of the two categories about a year ago. While that department’s recent sales figures remain undisclosed, industry sources estimate H-E-B’s beer and wine sales at around $1 billion (Texas law prohibits the sale of spirits in grocery stores). H-E-B remains an active family business, with Butt members currently serving in top leadership roles.ĭriven by its mission of providing customers with the complete grocery experience, H-E-B began selling beer and wine in the late 1970s. More than a century later, however, the family-owned H-E-B Grocery Co.-named after Florence’s youngest son, Howard Edward, who initiated expansion in the 1920s-operates roughly 330 full-service grocery stores across Texas under its main H-E-B banner, as well as nine upscale Central Market locations, run as a separate division, and 55 H-E-B units in Mexico. Butt Grocery store in the small Central Texas town of Kerrville in 1905, it would’ve been hard to imagine the shop eventually ranking as one of the largest retailers in the United States. H-E-B is at the cutting edge of modern grocery retailing in Texas and nationwide.Īs the director of H-E-B's wine and beer department, Dan Schuette has played a major role in making the grocery giant a billion dollar player in the beverage alcohol industry.
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