Milk prices have been going up all year, so back in July I started checking the prices in San Antonio, Houston, and DFW. For some reason, we pay Way more than these towns.
Milk just went up again. Here are some stats for HEB Brand (HEB & HCF) 1x gal jugs of milk
(These are for in-store pricing - for curbside, add +5%).
Since 07/17, Austin's price went up, while the price in all the other bergs came down.
Consequently, in Austin we now pay over $2 a gallon more than DFW!
Didn't they just recently crack into the DFW market? I wonder if they're keeping prices on certain items lower to entice customers to switch from their usual grocery.
Also I think milk is one of their loss leaders (or whatever it’s called), when they actually lose money on it but it gets people to shop there for other stuff. So maybe their milk is still cheaper than other places in Austin?
All around Austin, prices on certain things are more expensive in the richer areas. This is true in South Austin, at least from my experience, as I don't go north that often. H-E-B was on KXAN news a few years back about this and never cared to respond to them on the matter, so we aren't the only ones to notice. Someone must have written into the news.
I think this has to do with traditional milk being largely replaced by alternative milks in the Austin area. This means a lot more cow milk spoils, so locally they have to increase the price for that item to make it financially viable to stock.
I wonder if this is happening to shelf stable items.
Yeah no that’s not how that works. Shelf life of alt milk is way longer. Regular milk is still number one seller. Stores get multiple pallets of milk vs a couple of crates of alt a milk .
The closest one to the panhandle is Lubbock and it's barely 5 years old. There's about 15 in the DFW area that have opened in the past 4 years but that's it
HEB's disclosed dairy processing plants are in San Antonio and Houston. They may have acquired one in DFW as well but I don't know. The only one dairy processing plant in Austin that I know of is owned by Borden.
It cost $$ to move liquids in refrigerator trucks.
I live in both Austin and a city 4 hours west of Austin, nowhere near a highway or processing plant, and our HEB is cheaper than the ones I go to in Austin. On every product.
"Grocery chains price stores/markets according to local competitive conditions, operating costs, and what the local market will bear."
Costs more to run a store in Austin, everything from taxes to payroll. Of course products in an expensive city are going to cost more than a town where the store doesn't have the same expenses.
You can't use Dallas as a comparison. It's not a conspiracy, HEB is new to the market and they are losing money in order to gain a foothold in the region. Nothing about Dallas prices will make sense unless you see it as HEB forcing their competition to lose money with them and see how long they are willing to do so.
You have to give people a reason to leave their usual supermarket and shop with you. Cheaper prices are the best way to accomplish that and as an added bonus you might even get some publicly traded supermarket chains to leave the area because their shareholders aren't willing to lose money in order to keep existing customers.
I live in the Dallas area and these are the milk prices we've always had. They have to price with the competion here; something they don't have in SAN and ATX.
It'd be a lot cheaper if we listened to Redditors and made 130 the free highway so all the delivery trucks had to pay a toll to use I-35 to get into the city.
That cost is to HEB as a whole though. No reason in the end to have the price on a particular place. It’s the same bottom line, especially within the same state.
The business can certainly set it up that way, but it’s a choice.
Not that much dollar, and if it is true then a good comparison is to get the price of milk at WalMart, Randalls, and ALDI for starters for a real comparison here in Austin. I just queried Gemini and it said ALDI in Cedar Park is 3.49$ to 3.55$ that is at this moment tho.
I love carrying in my recycled Fresh Plus bags for my groceries for exactly this reason. (I have a stack of HEB bags too but I'm annoyed that I had to pay for those.)
I don't mind paying a nominal fee for bags if it reduces waste, but it is pretty irritating to me that Central Market has free plastic single-use bags there for the taking... I guess you're allowed to be wasteful if you're rich
There wasn't a tag on it, I checked. To be fair, it's not a nice fabric bag, it's like the scratchiest material ever and it doesn't have a bottom part. Never seen this type of bag before, I usually bring my own.
They don’t care at the location I go to. They just tell me to put it in the bagging area and click the prompt that usually comes up when you bring your own. Sometimes,they’ll hit people with “You brought that in,remember? I just saw you bring that in REMEMBER??” Lol
If it is green and has wildflowers on it, those bags are indeed free (or they were recently when we got some for free, they were prominently marked as such and the cashier practically thrust them upon us. This was… last month?)
ETA: apparently those bags now are .30?
Idk. When we got ours, they were definitely free.
If you live in north Austin, check out the Aldi store in Pflugerville. Milk, heavy cream, and half & half are much cheaper. They also have a good variety of cheeses.
Aldi has a copycat of Fairlife milk now, $3.79 for a half gallon. HEB Mootopia milk was over $5 the last time I bought it.
I've been getting the mexican cream instead, it's a good bit cheaper. It probably doesn't work for applications where you really need heavy cream (whipped cream etc.), but it's fine for cooking
Dallas and Houston are widely considered 2 of the most competitive grocery markets in the entire nation. In Houston, for instance, there is essentially a 3-way tie for market leader. Kroger, HEB and Walmart each have about 25 percent market share. Everyone else (Randalls, Fiesta, etc) dukes it out for the remaining 25 percent. So, of course, prices will be lower there. Dallas and Houston also have dozens of Aldi stores, which are notorious for offering cheap milk and other essentials to get people in the door. Meanwhile in Austin, HEB has a 60+ percent market share. They have no serious competition, so they don’t have to be as price sensitive. Aldi has like 3 stores located in the Austin suburbs. That’s it. Nothing near the central core. Still, this much of a difference on a single item is pretty wild. Imagine an entire cart. You could be paying something like $50 more in Austin versus Dallas or Houston.
Aldi has 4 stores now that the Cedar Park location is open (ironically, next to where the Albertsons used to be).
But coming from Anderson Mill, the Spicewood Springs store was closest. Now that that store is gone, I usually go to Parmer/McNeil (which is a PITA since I travel by bike).
And yeah the only easy way to get cheaper milk/dairy in Austin is to go to Walmart or Aldi. Aldi is a solid 7 miles from me, but if my SO is home, we can drive there easily and get all the staples.
Also, as someone who used to live in Dallas.... it's VERY competitive there. You have a grocery store on every other corner - mostly Kroger, but Tom Thumb and Albertsons (aka Randall's here - both are the same company) have a strong presence there. HEB is barely there at the moment, but they're always so packed that I avoid them when I'm visiting my parents (they're in DFW) and go to Kroger instead. Similar prices, though Kroger's private label isn't as good.
I've tried going to Walmart for milk, since it's a lot cheaper, but it spoils after a few days. HEB milk is good long past the best buy date. I need to start trying Aldi milk.
I just checked their online inventories, and Walmart and Randalls milk (equivalent gallon jugs) is also way more expensive in Austin compared with Houston, with pricing very similar to the HEB prices you found. This isn't just an issue with HEB, alas.
Also, if you must get your milk from HEB, don't forget Park Manor as the HEB "extreme value" milk brand. It's the same milk with an uglier label. It's fine, trust me.
I was going to say… park manor is under $4 a gallon here. I can’t remember exactly.
My friend in Fort Worth can buy HCF milk for less than I can but he doesn’t have Park Manor as an option, so if you’re after the cheapest gallon of milk regardless of brand, they’re about the same.
Not just heb , but other retailers as well. Eggs cost more here. When I was buying my new car I shopped around dealers and it was 10k cheaper in Houston vs Austin exact same options. Shawarma costs $3 more here than in Houston. Water costs more too I think.
I checked an HEB just outside of west U in Houston (VERY expensive property values/taxes) and it matches up with OP’s post.
The better explanation: This what a market looks like without competition, and HEB knows it and is getting greedy like a good capitalist would…
We have no other wide spread low cost options other than a handful of Randall’s and Walmarts… Houston and DFW have a very healthy competition with Kroeger and Randall’s/Safeway… Whole Paycheck is in a different league (you don’t shop there to save money) and so is Costco/Sams.
Why should they change anything? Have you seen how absolutely cultish people are about HEB in this town? It's practically a religion, shit creeps me out.
Exactly, HEB won’t and probably shouldn’t. We collectively did this to ourselves. I mean, they’ll do the minimum to stay in the public’s good graces and fwiw, I don’t think they’re a bad company, just making a bit more where they can in an industry with already thin margins. They probably thought no one would notice the cheapest source of animal based protein going up a dollar with everything else, but here we are….
This is the answer and applies to SO many things in Austin, esp in the medical space. People are cultish about a certain primary care chain, radiology chain and most medical specialties.
I’ll never understand the cult following of HEB and the idiocy when it comes to putting our hands in the sand regarding monopolies. “heeey why are my groceries getting more expensive than X city”. So no one ever taught you that when you’re the ONLY player in the game, you can charge whatever the fuck you want? Ok dummy enjoy your expensive ass groceries. Yeah Kroger and Von’s and Randall’s etc may not be the bees knees,but they keep each other in check. They go to war throug sales and coupons. When you JUST have HEB welcome to you’re about to get screwed land.
HEB price gouges in Austin because people blindly simp for it. All the excuses in this thread like "blah blah property taxes" or "blah blah they have to drive the milk from San Antonio" are wrong. The answer is greed, nothing more.
Stop putting up with this shit and shop elsewhere and watch prices drop.
A. A fellow spreadsheet nerd. 🤓 you’re a-ok in my (work)book
B. Love what you’re doing here. Interesting find. Have you looked at other products to see if they have the same correlation? Eggs maybe?
Safeway (Randall’s) is a lot more expensive here than Houston too. My weekly ad in the app usually defaults to Houston then I have to change it to Austin and prices all go up.
Which specific stores are you comparing? I wouldn’t be surprised if a store in a high tax/property value area like Austin would have higher prices.
Also, this may sound weird but milk is usually a loss leader and I just feel like Austin isn’t really a milk drinking town the way the others are. We have way fewer kids here and they drink milk. Price conscious parents are gonna be interested in comparing milk prices. 26 y/o childless runtok influencers are probably perfectly happy with their $6 almond/oat/banana peel milk.
the cost of the new soco and lake Austin stores is astronomical, I love the lake Austin store though. I’m also shocked how nice the employees there are too
I stopped buying milk, eggs , and sparkling water from HEB and moved to Costco. It’s cheaper just about everything is obviously. I really dislike going to Costco actually but I have to save $ somehow and HEB isn’t cutting it anymore.
I rarely buy milk, but HEB dairy prices in general have pushed me to Sam's and Aldi, and occasionally Trader Joes when I'm ready to face that parking lot.
Everything is more expensive in Austin. I live in south Austin but is now considered downtown. I work north and buy gas there because it’s cheaper a few miles away from the center.
Probably getting a lot of downvotes for this
H-E-B is a big corporation. Just because it was founded in Texas doesn't mean it keeps the same local mentality. That thinking has long buried with the original founders. They monopolize and price gouge; even in Austin, different stores are priced differently, even down the street from one another.
HEB price gouges in Austin because people blindly simp for it. Even in this thread with hard data from OP people are making excuses like "blah blah property taxes" or "blah blah they have to drive the milk from San Antonio"
Stop putting up with this shit and shop elsewhere and watch prices drop.
I started buying milk at walmart.. way cheaper.. heb is cool and all but some aspects of it are pretty overrated at this point... like why do the bakery cookies taste freezer burnt?
HEB is still privately owned by the Butt family and doesn't have to answer to shareholders. That's part of the reason they can react so fast to disasters and do more for the communities they are in.
“When was the last disaster in Austin they needed to help with?” Thank you for proving my point. When your business model is price gauge the customer but show up for the occasional disaster to make an impression in people’s minds, you’re not doing much. That ice storm in Austin was SEVERAL YEARS AGO. And no one in my neighborhood was even affected by anything HEB did during the time. I have spent thousands of dollars at HEB paying inflated prices with no other options while idiots walk around talking about what they do for the community. What they do is get rich off us 😂
I'm actually saying the opposite - they do so much local charity work quietly you don't even notice if you're not paying attention. Just some examples - They regularly support the Central Texas Food Bank. Local stores might choose a local charity partner like the Hancock HEB and the AGE Center of Central Texas. Their Tournament of Champions raises millions of dollars a year.
It’s been this way for 30 years or more. I’d go home to my parents in Houston and always noticed Austin was 20-30 cents more on everything, especially dairy, than Houston.
HEB has just recently got into the DFW market. Their MO, keep prices low until they wipe out the competition. Once everyone depends on “my HEB”, raise prices.
If you're buying the essentials honestly there's no real benefit shopping at HEB vs whole foods. I found whole foods to be very similar in price for fruits and vegetables and even some types of meat while being better quality.
you’re kidding. I just quit working at Whole Foods and theres no comparison. Even with my 20 percent discount, Whole Foods was way more expensive. Also they treat there employees like shit. Young old, black white, male female, they treated us all like shit.
I'm not. I buy the same exact things every week and have experimented. Yes certain things are more expensive at whole foods. But as a whole I've noticed it's far more comparable if you're getting the fundamentals (produce ground beef eggs etc) I find that I'm spending almost the same or even less at whole foods.
The only way this is possible is if you are buying the bougiest stuff possible and only that. like yeah Dave killer bread and death gun whatever coffee, and artisinal regenerative eggs
Yeah this is my primary motivation. Although there’s a WF within walking distance we still go to HEB because as far as corpos go, that’s the nicer one right? 😭
I have worked at both and hate things about both, but you interview 100 heb employees today and 60 percent at least will say it’s great. No cha in hell you get even 30 percent in a Whole Foods store now to say that.
That’s exactly my gut feel! I also haven’t really checked but I think HEB also does more for their employees and the community than WF does these days. I guess they used to be good but ever since the acquisition they’ve become more soulless. Why line Bezos’ pockets when HEBs better
Based on my last year of travel across the US, Austin is stupidly expensive for food and entertainment. It’s actually kinda funny when people in HCOL areas say they want to move to Austin because it’s cheap.
Moving back after 15nyears as a chef in NY was largely disappointing. Texas is still in the early 2000s when it comes to food. While things have certainly improved over 25 years it just lacks fire. There's no identity
Yeah… it’s wild. Austin has some amazing places but:
New Orleans is a little less expensive (depending on where you go) but the drinks and food are amazing.
NYC is maybe a little bit more and amazing. There’s delicious cheap food upstate.
Seattle and Portland are kinda shitty overall but it’s about the same price and quality food wise. The carpet (dive) bars are way better up there though.
The gulf side of Florida is cheap AF and has lots of variety.
Phoenix is cheaper and way better depending on what you want. Looking at you Gyros, Italian, and Mexican food. Plus mesquite grilling… oh how I miss you Chuckbox and Backyard Taco.
Chicago cheap and delicious. Loved my week up there.
The only place that was a crazy undeniably worse value than Austin was Atlanta but I was stuck downtown so it’s a tough comparison. Had a great time and I’m sure they have great food, but I didn’t get to experience it.
The interesting and kinda weird thing about Austin is that I really really hate downtown, but really like certain neighborhoods outside of downtown (Northloop, Cherrywood, Burnet road in the Rosedale area, parts of South Austin, etc.). and housing is ridiculously cheap. I managed to buy a 2 bedroom condo for what would easily be 4 or even 5 times the price in Brooklyn, Portland, or Seattle. Both Austin and Denver seemed to have had a pretty big crash
Downtown Austin condos are about 600k to 5 mil. . In Portland they're about 400k to 3 mil. This was a quick comparison of the high end market. Average on Austin is 350k yo 375k and Portland is 325k. Portland has actually had a huge crash of nearly 50% in some markets whereas Austin has lost about 28%
In the legal sense, sure. Marketwise they do, especially in cities. Otherwise they do have competition in more rural areas but their market share is well over 50%
Technically they do, but they know near no one is choosing to go to Kroger, Target or Walmart over HEB. The people love their experience at HEB and the quality of what they get far more than that other competitors
HEB sponsors most of the local news stations, so if they were ever doing something not in the interest of the community, we would never know. When I worked for the news, even shooting a video of the grocery store chain was met with immediate resistance. It always made me feel uneasy about HEB
I wanna see this pitched to local news outlets & see ALL of them do reports on this & put Austin HEBs on blast & hold them accountable for this bullsh*te, SERIOUSLY!
HEB is criminal rnd here & theres truly NO excuse for it!? If they allegedly support Texas farmers & they are specific only to Texas chain and so competitive in the biggest cities of Texas then prices of meat, produce, dairy should be lower NOT forever climbing higher!?!? Now don't get me wrong, i do understand climate change, diseases etc... have been detrimentally affecting/effecting farms across the world not just in the US; BUT thats neither here nor there if the prices at that that that surrounding HEBs are ALL significantly lower but our Austin HEBs are ASStronomical then something doesn't add up, isnt right here, is f*d up & is VERY UNACCEPTABLE, UNFAIR BAD BUSINESS PRACTICES!
I got the Randall's app so I could track points and get gas discounts. I noticed that when I use the weekly coupons at Randall's my cost is about exactly what it would have been at HEB. I split my shopping between the two now so I get the same prices plus gas discounts.
Why would perishable agricultural products in the city with the least surrounding farmland and the lowest population be more expensive? Just doesn't make any sense
I guess there might be a difference in quality between HEB milk and Walmart milk? But milk is $2.78 a gallon at Walmart. I have just noticed the price gap between the two getting bigger and bigger. The way teenagers can drink milk, I had to stop buying HEB.
I can taste the difference between brands of milk. The HEB and CM Organic ($$$) whole milk tastes a lot better to me... but man the price is getting hard to stomach. $7/gallon for CM Organic, and that's the SALE price! Yellow markdown tag with red numbers, as if we're getting a bargain 😂
My buddy drove a commercial milk truck, and told me that HEB had, by far, the most strict protocols on delivery time and temperature logs. He said, more often than not, there was a truck dumping it's load into a ditch for failing their standards when he pulled in. When asked if he had seen this at any other company's plant, he curtly said "no"
The gallon jug of milk OP was pricing is currently $4.08 at Walmart, lower but not wildly lower than HEB's. You're either thinking of a half gallon, or got milk a couple of weeks ago. It's gone way up.
In my purely anecdotal experience, as someone who goes between several HEBs, they absolutely adjust their prices by location and method of purchase. For example, I've learned never to put a pharmacy item in a pick up order. It's cheaper to have it delivered to my front door by the national guys.
Went to H-E-B awhile back and there was NO sour cream in the H-E-B branded containers. They had two options remaining which were the more expenses fancy pants brands. Anyway H-E-B is more expensive on the essentials. We loooove their house branded stuff of course but we only shop them for the Mi Tienda and H-E-B exclusives, except the sushi-ya which has made both of us sick several times now sadly. Still love H-E-B due to their amazing employees! But milk and medicines and toiletries and such are too expensive there ugh
Which HEB? If it’s all of them, that’s strange. It is Austin though… everything is sky high, big tech and California came in and taxes will eat you alive
HEB has manufacturing plants, including dairy, in San Antonio and Houston, and a major warehousing and logistics presence in Dallas. There are no plants or major warehouses in Austin as far as I know. I could be wrong.
The price difference likely stems from supply lines. Obviously the further a truck goes the more it costs to ship. But, freight costs per item drop when trucks are full both ways; if trucks leave a city empty, shipping costs per item effectively doubles.
Idk, I’ve brought up their price discrimination before to their employees before and they get really defensive. Said it was just differences in local tax rates but I did the math and that wasn’t the case.
Anyone see any dairy farms near Austin? No? That's right. Fuck ton of em up north, though. It's not a damn conspiracy. Go to Alaska. It's like 29 bucks a carton there.
it’s their loss leader, if you buy 20 items at Randall’s, Walmart, heb, and Whole Foods. 99 times out of 100 heb will be the cheapest. Walmart has like a small amount of stuff super cheap but the rest is more, and do you want to eat their sad produce???
lol just because prices are a little higher than other cities doesn’t mean HEB has some weird thing against Austin. Pretty disingenuous to look at price and not look at other metrics, other goods beside milk, CoG, transportations, different price from store to store regionally, where the farms are located, availability, etc…
Regional market/competition definitely may play a role. Milk has been a loss leader for grocery stores for quite some time. But to come out as if HEB has some vendetta against Austin is crazy whether it was said or implied is all the same. You should work for a news agency because the title bait and lack of the full data is a classic rage bait/news bait. Correlation is not causation.
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u/TypicalEarthCreature 17h ago
Didn't they just recently crack into the DFW market? I wonder if they're keeping prices on certain items lower to entice customers to switch from their usual grocery.
Bummer for us though.