Overheard at the New H-E-B

The woman in the Lululemon leggings and limited-drop Hoka sneakers said it with the serene confidence of someone who moved here in 2022: "This place has so much character now."

She was gesturing at a brick wall that had been intentionally scuffed by some Brooklyn transplant on a six-month design contract. Her friend nodded, clutching a $9.99 cold brew in a compostable cup the size of a small fire extinguisher.

I almost dropped my basket. The basket, by the way, costs a $5 deposit if you want to avoid the plastic one that screams "environmentally unconscious."

This is the new H-E-B at South Lamar and Barton Springs, the one they dropped like a spaceship in 2024 after tearing out the smaller, meaner store that had served the neighborhood since the late '80s. The old one smelled like fryer grease from the deli, sawdust from the meat counter, and the particular desperation of Austinites trying to stretch a paycheck until Friday. You knew half the people in the aisles. Now you know which ones have the black Amex from the tone of their Apple Watch pings.

I remember cashing my first post-college paycheck at the old service desk in 1997. The lady behind the counter—Ms. Gloria, hair in a French twist that could survive a tornado—looked at my ID, looked at me, and said, "Honey, this ain't enough to cash without a manager, but I'll do it anyway because you look like you need beer money." She slid me $312 and a peppermint. The new version of that desk is a "concierge experience" staffed by someone named Jordan who asks if you'd like to enroll in H-E-B Plus while he scans your retinas.

The deli used to move breakfast tacos for 99 cents before 10 a.m. Flour tortillas the size of hubcaps, filled with eggs that had never heard of kale. Add a Lone Star tallboy for another $1.50 and you were equipped for a day of manual labor or nursing a hangover on the Town Lake hike-and-bike trail. Last Tuesday I watched a man in Patagonia shorts pay $6.49 for something called a "deconstructed migas bowl" that arrived deconstructed because the concept hadn't been fully stress-tested.

The meat counter guys knew everybody. Mr. Ramirez would eyeball a ribeye for you, trim it while telling you about his grandson's little league game, then throw in two extra pounds of breakfast sausage because "you family now." These days the butchers are behind glass like zoo animals and the signage brags about "traceable sourcing" from ranches that definitely have a head of marketing. The last time I asked for a specific cut the kid looked at me like I'd requested a fax machine.

The beer selection tells the whole story.

Used to be three brands of cheap domestic, some imports if you were feeling fancy, and a dusty bottle of champagne for people who got engaged at the County Line. Now it's 47 feet of hazy IPA, sours aged in barrels that previously held bourbon, and something called "pastry stout" that costs more per ounce than the gas I put in my truck. They hid the cheap stuff on the bottom shelf like it was pornography. I bought a twelve-pack of High Life anyway. The self-checkout machine judged me in seven languages.

My basket that day held: one sad tamale, a bag of actual potatoes (not the $7 "heritage variety" that comes with a biography), and a six-pack of the aforementioned High Life. Total: $27.84. In 1999 the same run—real tamales from the ladies who set up the cooler by the pharmacy, russets, and a case of beer—would have set me back about $23 and change. I'd have enough left for cigarettes and still make rent on that $425 apartment off South Congress where the neighbor played Lightnin' Hopkins at volumes that rattled the windows.

The pharmacy used to be a place of gentle chaos. Mrs. Delgado would hand you your antibiotics and ask about your mother's bursitis. She kept lollipops in a jar shaped like a teddy bear. The new pharmacy is a pod with a sliding window and a sign that reads "Please maintain social distance even though the plague is over." You order your prescriptions through an app that sends you targeted ads for probiotics based on what you searched at 1:14 a.m. last week.

Outside, the parking lot used to host a rotating cast of characters. The CD guy with the table full of pirated Tejano and hip-hop. The old vet who sold hand-carved walking sticks. The woman with the tamale cooler who always had two dozen left at closing and would cut you a deal. All gone. Now it's EV charging stations and signs warning that "loitering is prohibited" in four-point font. The only thing lingering these days are software engineers filming content about their "H-E-B haul."

I don't blame the minimum-wage employees. They're navigating the same corporate hellscape as everyone else, except now they have to explain to customers why the store no longer carries the off-brand cereal that tasted exactly like the name-brand but cost $1.40 less. The blame goes higher, to the people who decided Austin's weirdness could be repackaged as a marketing vertical.

The woman and her friend moved on to admire the wall of hot sauces arranged like an art installation. I caught the tail end of their conversation: "It's just so Austin, you know?"

No, ma'am. It isn't.

The real Austin was the store before the architects got ahold of it. It was ugly fluorescent lighting and carts with one bad wheel and the distinct possibility that the person in front of you in line was either a roofer, a punk bassist, or both. It was the smell of bleach meeting frying bacon at 7 a.m. It was knowing that if you forgot your wallet, the cashier would still let you take your stuff if they recognized you.

That store didn't need exposed brick to have character. It had people who lived here, not people performing living here.

I paid for my overpriced tamale and walked out into the blinding South Austin sun. The digital billboard on the side of the building was already advertising a cooking class: "Learn to Make Grandma's Recipes (Vegan Version)." My actual grandma never put nutritional yeast in her enchiladas, but I guess that's not the point anymore.

Some losses don't announce themselves with bulldozers. They just slowly replace every real thing with a more expensive, better-branded version until one day you realize the character was the part they had to import.