Pete Freedman
Ahahahaha, You Guys Thought HEB Was Coming To Town.
Starting on Monday afternoon, the Dallas social media landscape collectively lost its shit over the news that the San Antonio-based grocery chain HEB had purchased six Sun Fresh Market stores in North Texas, with four of those spots being located in Dallas proper.
Why? Well, because everyone just assumed that this real estate play meant that the chain was coming to town, despite the fact that HEB has been acquiring property in North Texas for some time now, and that it has consistently told anyone who’d listen that its plans only involve expanding its Central Market brand throughout the region.
Credit the Dallas Morning News for fanning these flames of assumption: “It’s starting,” launched a DMN piece on Monday called “Here comes H-E-B: San Antonio-based grocer buys six D-FW sites”.
That’s pretty definitive language! Of course, that piece was later updated to include the statements being used by other media outlets to clarify that HEB was solely planning on using these locations for Central Market purposes or real estate turnarounds. But the lead and headline remain, and a quote from HEB that keeps on keeping on with the chain’s lines about Central Market being its current brand of choice in North Texas has been buried seven paragraphs into the updated article — only to then followed immediately by the earlier coverage save attempt line, “But still there will be speculation about whether any stores might become H-E-B or Central Market.”
Gee, DMN. Where might such speculation possibly come from?
CBS, to its credit, is pretty firm on the fact that “some of the locations may become Central Market stores… [and] others may eventually be sold.”
Is HEB going to come to town eventually? Yeah, probably. And, I dunno, I guess that’s cool, if you’re vehemently anti-Walmart or whatever.
Until then, let’s all just agree that lazy, assumptive reporting that indulges gross capitalistic slobbering is maybe not the best look. We’re talking about goddamn grocery stores here — and not even ones in an area where the city actually needs any.