Residents of an Austin-area food desert call for an H-E-B

As H-E-B and its other store brands open or prepare to break ground in Houston and North Texas, Austin councilmember Vanessa Fuentes thinks there is no greater need for an H-E-B than in the unincorporated Central Texas community known as Del Valle. 

The area is on the Colorado River in southeastern Travis County, less than 10 miles from downtown Austin. With the local school district seeing a population of more than 80,000 people, the community has long desired a nearby grocery store. And H-E-B owns a plot of land on Highway 71 and FM 973 in Del Valle.

Instead, it functions as a textbook food desert. Residents have relied on convenience stores and small grocers such as JD’s Supermarkets, or make a long trek to the nearest H-E-B in Austin or Bastrop.  

Fuentes, who serves a portion of Del Valle as the District 2 council member, sent a letter to H-E-B CEO Howard Butt III in late October asking for a meeting with the executive team of the grocer to discuss the matter. Ultimately, H-E-B did not provide a timeline to Fuentes or Chron when questioned about when a store would come to the area. 

“We are experiencing tremendous growth in that area,” Fuentes said, noting that Tesla’s headquarters are located in Del Valle. “So we’re having a lot of activity but yet, our basic needs for reliable, affordable, healthy food options have gone unmet.” 

Fuentes added that she would like to see any reliable, large-scale grocer open in Del Valley, but she understands that the Del Valle community wants a Texas-favorite grocery store with affordable food. Plus, she thinks other grocers may not feel much incentive to open a store in Del Valle when a major competitor like H-E-B already owns land in the area. 

But since 2016, the grocer has left its land on Highway 71 and FM 973 untouched. Fuentes says that the ongoing sentiment among Del Valle residents is that H-E-B is waiting for more population growth to come to the area before they break ground to ensure that their business is profitable.

“It’s hard to kind of reconcile what we’re told is the framework that guides how H-E-B makes these decisions, versus what you see is happening; you’re actively seeing the changes in your area,” Fuentes said. “So the community really wants this to get off the ground as quickly as possible.”

Leslie Sweet, H-E-B’s director of public affairs for Central Texas, notes that the company expanded its home delivery service to Del Valle residents and is making “substantial investments in partnerships that will immediately help improve food access.”

“As we review our long-term planning options, it often makes sense to purchase property well in advance of our current real estate needs,” Sweet said. “Development in Southeast Austin and Del Valle has been encouraging, and it made sense to invest in land holdings in Del Valle for our future aspirations to bring a store to this community.” 

While Del Valle residents wait, H-E-B has kept busy with other Central Texas projects in recent years. This past summer, H-E-B opened a store in southwest Austin and started construction on a store in Pflugerville. And in 2021, the grocer announced plans to update Austin’s longest-standing H-E-B store on South Congress. The company expects to re-open the store in the summer or early fall of 2024.

Meanwhile, Del Valle has been pushing for H-E-B to address food insecurity in the area, and residents have expressed feeling devalued by the beloved Texas grocer as time goes on.  

“The issue with waiting for the land to become more developed is that H-E-B is suggesting that the people who currently live in Del Valle are not important enough or significant enough to deserve having a grocery store within a reasonable distance from their homes, like the rest of Austin,” a 2020 petition reads. 

In addition to pushing H-E-B to move faster, Fuentes says she is working on other fixes and has secured funding for the creation of a grocery store co-op. 

“I am also in parallel trying to make the case of how governments can and should have a role in addressing food insecurity when the private market won’t move fast enough, and so that work still continues,” Fuentes said. “But just want to underscore the community has been very loud and clear with me that they want their H-E-B.”