Houston Historic Retail

Editor’s Note: Shoutout to HHR Fan and contributor Jason McMillon, who provided the photos and information for this story! The franchised Timewise Exxon locations in Houston are finally starting to don a new name, Honey Farms. The change was not unexpected and was announced after 64 stations were acquired by Global Partners LP a few months ago as part of a larger shakeup of Timewise, which landed the company in the hands of Shell Oil. The Honey Farms brand was another acquisition by Global Partners, and before the conversion of these Houston stores, the chain operated about 30 locations around …

Howdy folks, and welcome back to Houston Historic Retail! Today, we’re taking a quick look at arguably the most prominent development in Houston right now, West on West. WoW, as it’s abbreviated, is a project spearheaded by local developer NewQuest, which looks to redevelop a forty-year-old shopping center on Westheimer. Their plan came to light over a year ago with the announcement of a new 99 Ranch Market in the shopping center. While the full scope of the plan was not known at the time, it was obvious from construction that major changes were in store. When this center was …

It has been reported to HHR that what is likely one of the first cases of Timewise rebranding is getting underway on the Northwest side of town. The transition is not unexpected and has been openly mentioned since Shell acquired Timewise from local ownership in June 2022. Since Timewise was mainly composed of Shell and Exxon outlets, the company split itself along those lines and sold its 64 Exxon stores to Global Partners earlier this year. Since then, little has happened with Global Partners, whose C-Stores are mostly in the Northeastern United States, opting to license the Timewise name and …

Howdy, folks, and welcome back to HHR. Today, we’re looking at an ex-Randalls that had an interesting impact on two different chains. The location we’re checking out today is at 1804 W 43rd St, Houston, TX 77018, and has roots all the way back in 1964, when the building first opened as a Randalls. However, it’s not the chain you’re thinking of, but the first iteration of Randalls. This would be their seventh store and would represent a push to the Northwest side that would better reflect the Randalls we know to this day. However, as we’ve all heard before, …

Howdy, folks, and welcome back to HHR! Today, we’re taking it easy as we slide into Thanksgiving with another Random Retail! Even though my last Random Retail wasn’t that long ago, I feel I should key new readers in. These Random Retail posts are photos that were taken without a post in mind, but I still feel they are worth sharing. There’s not much to say story-wise with most of these, but sit back, relax, and watch the color pictures fly through your screen! Let’s start off at the former Foodaram on Ella. This building is no stranger to HHR …

Howdy, folks, and welcome back to HHR. In this post, we’re looking at another one of the former Deauville Fashion Malls, which has spent the last 20 years hidden in plain sight. Before we dive into the Southwest Deauville Mall in the tiny town of Meadows, let’s first talk about the history of Deauville in general. The Deauville Corporation was founded in the early 1970s to build apartments to keep up with the steadily rising population of the time. The company would soon construct small shopping centers, attracting Randalls as a tenant. With this new profit stream and the uncertainty …

Howdy, folks, and welcome back to HHR. Today, we’re going back to Burger House. No, not the one we went to a few weeks ago, still operating as a Church’s Chicken, but rather a decommissioned location in Spring (1609 Spring Cypress Rd, Spring, TX 77388). This is the second of three Burger Houses we’ll be visiting, and in today’s post, I want to expand a bit on what I feel are some of the issues Burger House encountered and provide comment on the Houston fast food industry in general. For those who don’t remember, or more likely didn’t read, the …

In honor of the second to last TYOK post being published this Wednesday, I thought it appropriate to close out the week with another light Kroger post. This a return to a store we visited a couple of weeks back. The new “Hispanic” Kroger in the Almeda area. When visiting the main store, the conclusion I came to was that while it was a nice Krogering experience, there wasn’t too much “Hispanic” about the store beyond an expanded international product mix. This product mix even included things like Tide from Vietnam. Compared to my Sellers Bros. post from last week, …