Howdy, everyone, and welcome back to Houston Historic Retail! Today we have our second installment of Rice Epicurean’s Post Mortum inSpec’stion. After Rice Epicurean closed in July (you don’t think I’d have to mention that again, but the number of confused Rice Customers that stopped in the minutes it took to capture these photos speaks otherwise), the building and pretty much everything remaining inside. In our first check-in about two weeks ago, the building still mostly resembled Rice inside and out. However, as of this week, the interior is beginning to look pretty “Specsy”! As HHR contributor Anonymous in Houston noted, the red and white paint scheme has the building looking more like a Safeway than it has in over 30 years! Beyond the new coat of paint, other updates include new aisle markers, and removal of refrigerated cases, and a bank of freezers. The deli is still intact, including the Olive Bar, which does have a possibility of reopening. Speculation is also building that See’s may reopen inside the new Spec’s.
Mike!!! How does it do it?!?!?
Do what?
I’m relieved to see that this Spec’s will keep much of the original supermarket feel that this building has maintained throughout the decades. As mentioned in the article, this Spec’s is certainly going to have a bit of a vintage Safeway-like feel to it! To me at least, that’s pretty neat. The concept of a candy store at a liquor store is still a bit hard for me to process even if ‘finer foods’ has long been a part of Spec’s larger stores.
Specs is very cheap. They will keep as much as they can and even the registers if those were left. Specs still uses Netscape on the computers.