Back in the 80s when I first moved to Houston one of my jobs was at Gerland's Food Fair. One of things I found out was that almost all the stores in Houston got their goods from the distributor Grocers Supply (GS). As a cost savings HEB handles their own distribution so they wouldn't be using GS. Because of this, if any grocery store closed GS would buy it at whatever cost and, if need be, sell it at a loss to prevent HEB from getting in the market.

HEB ended up creating HEB Pantry, which were smaller stores and started opening them up in Houston. I didn't care for them as I was used to their full sized stores in Corpus Christi, but they did the job and HEB became successful in the Houston market. None of the Pantry stores remain, they've all been replaced with new full sized stores.

http://www.bizjourna...ry4.html?page=all

interesting tidbit from that article:
The two Central Market stores in Austin have become a tourist attraction of sorts, drawing in more than 1.5 million visitors a year, second only to the state Capitol in terms of Austin tourist attractions.


boggles my mind that a grocery story is a tourist attraction.