Grocery News
Was this San Antonio supermarket chain on Amazon’s acquisition radar?
As far-fetched as it might seem, Amazon.com could have scooped up the H-E-B grocery chain instead of Whole Foods Market.
Brittain Ladd, who until February was senior manager of a group within the larger Amazon Fresh and Pantry team, tells CultureMap that while he was working at Amazon, he suggested both H-E-B and Whole Foods as potential acquisition targets for the e-commerce giant. Of course, Amazon is now buying Whole Foods in a deal valued at $13.7 billion as a way to plunge into the brick-and-mortar grocery business.
“I don’t know if Amazon executives ever seriously considered buying H-E-B, but all of the executives I spoke to agreed that H-E-B could be a viable acquisition target,” says Ladd, who’s now a global strategy and supply chain consultant for the grocery industry and other business sectors.
In conversations with fellow Amazon executives, Ladd says he maintained the e-commerce powerhouse could expand H-E-B nationwide to accommodate Amazon’s grocery plans. However, since Whole Foods already had a nationwide footprint, the Austin-based organic grocery retailer was a more attractive acquisition candidate, he says.
Industry observers doubt the Butt family, owners of H-E-B, would ever give up control of the San Antonio-based company to Amazon or any other acquirer. H-E-B is the largest grocer in Texas, with locations in the Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio areas.
Dya Campos, a spokeswoman for H-E-B, declined to comment. Representatives of Amazon couldn’t be reached for comment.
Why did Ladd recommend H-E-B as an acquisition target?
“I chose H-E-B because I believe they have arguably the best team of executives and merchandisers in grocery retailing,” he tells CultureMap. “H-E-B does a fabulous job of creating a positive experience for customers in their stores. H-E-B also does a masterful job of procuring high-quality products and pricing the products to generate value for customers.”
For years, H-E-B has enjoyed a loyal and enthusiastic following. For instance, customer experience research and consulting firm Temkin Group in June named H-E-B the most trusted brand in the U.S. among 329 companies. Also this year, Market Force Information, a provider of customer experience insights, put H-E-B at No. 4 on its list of the country’s best grocers.
H-E-B operates about 390 grocery stores in Texas and Mexico. In 2016, H-E-B rang up an estimated $23 billion in revenue, making it the 13th largest private company in the U.S., according to Forbes.
In April, H-E-B announced it had passed the 100,000-employee mark, giving it bragging rights as the largest private employer in Texas. More than 90,000 of those workers are in Texas, with the remainder in Mexico.
Alice Walton (second from left) with Olivia Walton, Annie Leibovitz, and Awol Erizku at a 2023 event at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.Photo by Wesley Hitt/Getty Images