HEB has a warehouse in San Antonio and another in Houston that have both dry and refrigerated storage.
Some 200,000 square feet is allocated just for meat storage. When full, the warehouse will hold about 150 loads of meat product.
"That sounds like a lot of meat, but we’ll turn that in about three days. We receive about 50 trucks a day. We only have eight bays to work with, so we end up receiving about 22 hours a day, and we never seem to get caught up."
HEB has a fleet of 1800 trailers and 370 tractors. Last year, drivers drove 42 million miles delivering groceries around South Texas
HEB has been recognized as an innovative leader in the retail industry. One of their greatest advancements is now every one of HEB’s retail cuts comes with cooking instructions, something which their customers have requested for many years, Lusk said. This one advancement, he told listeners, has redefined HEB's relationship with their customers.
"It gives our meat cutters and wrappers a tool to talk to our customers about how to prepare fresh meat.
"This is not a one-size-fits-all kind of program," he continued. "Every single item has unique cooking instructions based on the thickness of the cut and quality grade."
At the top of the label in big bold letters is the recommended cooking method — grilled, braised, oven fry, etc. Beneath that are temperature recommendations. In the upper right-hand corner is the time it takes to prepare that particular cut.
"Feedback from our customers indicates surprise that there are so many beef items that can be prepared in less than 10 minutes," Lusk told the group. "We’ve changed the consumer’s perception about beef from being a difficult to prepare category to one of convenience. Without fail, every item that cooks in less than 10 minutes has increased in sales."
This one program, Lusk said, has also changed HEB’s meat cutters’ view of their job responsibilities.
"Our meat cutters now understand that they’re cutting food. Twenty years ago, culinary wasn't even in their vocabulary. Back then, they took a big piece of meat, put it on the saw table and cut it into smaller pieces."
HEB has 207 stores, which means that they also have 207 individual processing centers because each store cuts its own product. That alone makes the margin for error great. To lessen that error, HEB works hard to train their meat cutters. Because every single item cut at retail has cutting thickness specifications, each meat cutter uses a ruler at the saw tables to ensure accuracy, proof of just how critical these specifications are.
