Representatives from HEB and local organizations attended the ribbon-cutting event on April 28 (Lauren Canterberry/Community Impact Newspaper)
The new HEB building built next to 651 S. Walnut Ave. , New Braunfels, will open to the public April 29 after more than a year of construction.
On April 28, the company held a grand opening ceremony for area stakeholders and IHB staff ahead of the grand opening the following morning.
New Braunfels HEB store leader Katie Siegler said the current store originally opened in 1994. The first HEB is located in New Braunfels where McKenna Events Center is today.
The approximately 76,000-square-foot grocery store is joined by two additional stores located at FM 306 and Hwy. 46 that were built to accommodate the growing population. Both stores have larger footprints than the first site.
In January 2021, a gas station and shopping mall that were attached to the main grocery store were demolished to make way for the new building, which has an area of more than 110,000 square feet.
“It is time for this part of the new Braunfels community to have a store that can keep up with the growth [and] It can offer more of the items you see on other store locations,” said Julie Bedingfield, HEB’s director of public affairs.
Kyle Stevens, the new vice president of HEB for the San Antonio area, said the new grocery store will include several first-of-its-kind products for HEB.
“The first ‘first’ will be a two-story True Texas BBQ with expanded dining options on the second floor,” Stevens said. “In addition, this will be our first HEB program to feature our home section.”
Sabina Israelian-Garcia, Vice President of General Merchandise Group for Pharmaceutical and Beauty Store at HEB, said the construction of the new home division and Haven & Key product line has been over a year.
Israelian-Garcia said home décor and furniture come from all over the world, and the division will also feature a Texas Proud production line.
The New Braunfels store was chosen as the first HEB location to include the department, but Israelian-Garcia said it will eventually expand to other stores across Texas.
“We see this reach about 100 locations over the next three years,” she said. “We will be in about 25 locations by the end of this year.”
Siegler said the store will also offer customers a wide selection of ready-to-eat and ready-to-eat meals from the original store, including sushi, oven-ready meals and homemade tortillas. Siegler said that while many other HEB locations have fresh tortillas, the Walnut Avenue location previously had no place to make them.
The store is also expected to include a healthy living section that will be stocked with bulk merchandise and dietary restriction options, Siegler said, and international sections will be more customer-centric.
Siegler and her team began “selling” products in the original store prior to the grand opening to clear merchandise and simplify the move to the new facility.
In the weeks leading up to the opening, Siegler said the products sold out more quickly than expected, and she and her team decided that keeping the store open with shelves semi-naked might harm the community.
“When we went through the Easter holidays and then got into sell-down mode last week, we sold through the product,” she said. “By the last day we had to make a call ‘Does this make sense to stay open?'” “
The original store is officially closed on April 25 at 6 PM
“It was bittersweet,” Siegler said. “We have many partners with more than 20 years of experience who have already grown up in this location.”
Siegler also announced a donation of $10,000 to both the McKenna Foundation and the communities in South Central Texas schools.
“As we open the doors to this new era, we know it is important that one of our first acts of service is to give back to the community,” Siegler said during the event.
Once the original building is decommissioned and the fixtures are returned to the Returns Center, the facility will be demolished to provide parking space.
It is also expected that the new Brownfels Fire Department will use the building for training purposes before it is razed to the ground.
Until the parking lot is completed, the pharmacy won’t offer car-to-car transfers, but customers will be able to get medications through curbside pickup, Bedingfield said. Ultimately, the store will have 26 curbside parking spaces.
Siegler said a smaller mega-opening ceremony will take place at 5:45 a.m. at the site before the store officially opens to customers. The event will include live polka music and ribbon cutting.
“It’s one of the coolest things when you open a store to see your first customers come in, and that’s what these managers are waiting for,” she said. “As we were encouraged [customers] outside the store [on April 25] We’ll encourage them to come into the store via the products entrance here, and then from that point open our doors, so we’ll be ready to get down to business.”
