Students visit H-E-B headquarters for job shadow

By Gisselle Washington | Staff Writer |

Twenty ETA students and their instructor Dr. Chang had the opportunity on Feb. 11 to visit the H-E-B Headquarters downtown to shadow their designers and architects and discover what they do.

The day included sitting in on presentations from the partners of the company, viewing their prototype Grab N’ Go H-E-B store, and touring the campus while meeting employees.

“Honestly it was kinda a lot to take in because it was so large and once you started walking around it’s very modern, it’s very nice because they have pieces of history everywhere as our tour guide was explaining,” freshmen Elizabeth Negron said. “ It was also pretty exciting because we got to see parts of HEB that you don’t really get to see. I guess you could say it was pretty interesting.”

H-E-B discussed the structure and layouts of their stores to better fit the need of the community and consumer. And built the store around a unique theme such as the newly built Wimberley H-E-B store that took the place of the Bowen Intermediate school.

“So I really liked the example of the middle school and taking the scoreboard and posting it into the store, they also took the floors of the basketball court and used the materials to build,” junior Eliana Negron said. They brought pieces of the old middle school and created a unique store for the community.”

The H-E-B partners used Auto CAD programs to design their draft store before going into the building phase.  

“I learned about some types of architecture and how they [ H-E-B partners]  work with certain programs,” Negron said. “We also got to see some graphic designing as well.”

Cover image: The students sit in on a presentation about the design of H-E-B stores. Photo by Robert Lozano.