When an H-E-B grocery store lost power in Austin, they didn’t throw food out or make people put back their purchases.
From the Washington Post:
Around him were a couple hundred shoppers, some with only credit cards, trying to stock up during a statewide emergency. The power had been going on and off in this Austin suburb as cold weather overwhelmed the Texas grid. But no one told shoppers to put their items back if they couldn’t pay cash.
When Hennessy got to the cashier, he said, she just waved him on, thanked him and told him to drive home safely.
Compare that to a similar incident in Portland where a Fred Meyer lost power. From The Oregonian:
The food continued to sit unrefrigerated as the power outage dragged on at the store in Northeast Portland, prompting employees to toss out boxes of packaged meat, cheese and juice, whole turkeys, racks of ribs and other items they feared had spoiled.
The mound of discarded food in two large dumpsters attracted a crowd of 15 to 50 people at times who started taking some of it. Employees called police when they felt the scene got tense. Activists said police were “guarding” the food. Police said they were responding to “restore order.” National media picked up the story.
Two very different ways of handling similar problems. And while I am sure there is more to the Fred Meyer story, the idea that the store had to call the police to “restore order” is preposterous. What I would have liked to have seen from Fredy Meyer, which is a Kroger owned brand, is them to create order themselves by having food that would have no problem out of refrigeration for a little while, cheese and other dairy products, packaged cold cuts, etc. and hand them out in a reasonable fashion. Throwing it all in a dumpster while people watch and then throwing your hands up when there is a commotion is disingenuous. At the same time, the Portland Police should have shown up and immediately said “you created this problem, fix it”.
Looking at the Austin story, I have to wonder if corporate will back up the store managers. Sure it is good press, but it is also a lot of product that is leaving the store. Even if there was no story, it would be tough at the corporate level to come down on store managers for doing what is right for the community, regardless of the cost. The situation in Texas was and continues to be dire for a number of individuals, a few thousand in expenses for a company the size of H-E-B is small potatoes.
The team at Fred Meyer needs to take a good look at the H-E-B story and the reasoning behind it and learn something.
Interesting comparison. What makes me amazed at this is that these stores didn’t have backup generators. To me that is crazy.
HEB is not known for being on the side of the people. In fact, the HEB owners PAC formally organizes against parent rights in education as one example. Kroger is much less politically involved, they are just disorganized. I think this all comes down to local management. This is also a good lesson on how quickly things can spiral out of control when a slight issue like a bad snowstorm or power outage arrives. It is certainly making me rethink some of my emergency preparations.