Here Everything Was Remarkable: Remembering The Jones & West Randall’s

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston with the photos taken by Mike Richardson

I must say that it has been a while since I’ve had a guest post here at Houston Historic Retail which has not been about a Kroger store! That said, today’s post is related to March’s The Year of Kroger post about the Kroger Signature store at the corner Jones Rd. and West Rd. in the northwest Houston suburbs. As I mentioned in that post, Kroger built that Signature store to compete against the established Randall’s store, Randall’s Food & Drug #35, located at the same intersection at 9503 Jones Road, Houston, TX 77065. This Randall’s opened in 1985 and closed in 2010.

Recently, Houston Historic Retail superfan Patrick Murphy posted a comment linking to some photos online of the Jones & West Randall’s during the closing sale the store had in 2010. These photos were taken by Mike Richardson. HHR editor Mike reached out to Mike Richardson and asked if we could use his photos in a blog post. Mike Richardson, who is an HHR reader, agreed to allow us to use these photos. A big thanks goes to Mike Richardson for allowing us to use these great photos and we also want to thank Patrick Murphy for bringing these photos to our attention.

The Jones & West Randall’s was one of my local Randall’s stores back when it was open. In fact, it might be hard to believe now, but Randall’s once had heavy coverage along the Jones Road corridor as they also had a location, Randall’s #25, located around four miles north on Jones Road at 13350 Jones Rd, Houston, TX 77070. Randall’s #25 operated between 1983 to 2005 and was quite similar to the Jones & West Randall’s on the inside. In fact, some interior elements of Randall’s #25 remain publicly visible today as the building is now home to a Habitat of Humanity ReStore thrift store. These two Randall’s were about equidistant from me and both were frequent stops over the years. While I had a slight preference for the Jones & West Randall’s over Randall’s #25, I did like that Randall’s #25 had an Eckerd in the parking lot which made for convenient shopping at two of Houston’s most-loved retailers in the 1980s and 1990s.

As I frequently say in The Year of Kroger posts where today’s Kroger stores are often replacement stores for older Kroger stores, the same is true with the Jones & West Randall’s. The Jones & West Randall’s is a replacement store for the Jersey Village Randall’s, Randall’s #10 located at 17410 Northwest Fwy, Houston, TX 77041, which only briefly was a Randall’s between 1979 and 1986. Today, that location operates as a Spec’s liquor store. While Specall’s are not unheard of, it is still strange to think of a Spec’s in an old Randall’s given Bob Onstead’s policy for many years of not selling beer & wine! The Jones & West location gave Randall’s a larger store for one-stop shopping as compared to the old Jersey Village store, which was a big push Randall’s was moving towards in the 1980s, and it also put Randall’s closer to the successful Steeplechase neighborhood while still keeping the store close to Jersey Village.

The Jones & West Randall’s used a common design Randall’s used for their non-Flagship stores in the 1980s. Longtime HHR readers have seen elements of these stores in previous posts about the Missouri City and Inwood Forest Foodaramas that were formerly Randall’s stores, or Randallsaramas as we call them at HHR, and in the post about the Food Town which used to be the Boris Yeltsin Randall’s in Clear Lake.  The stores had a large, grand entryway with earthtone tiles, a power alley with elaborate floral, bakery, and deli departments, an enclosed produce department, a dairy department niche along the back corner, a large pharmacy and health & beauty area in the front corner, and finally a large and elaborate photo and video rental department in the front corner. These Randall’s stores also featured an in-store bank (Commonwealth Savings in the early days, then First Interstate Bank, and then Wells Fargo Bank). The quality and variety of these stores, along with meticulous maintenance and customer service, made Randall’s Houston’s ‘remarkable store’ in the 1980s and 1990s and helped Randall’s match Kroger’s market share in Houston by the late 1980s as we mentioned in February’s The Year of Kroger post.

Although the Jones & West Randall’s was very well-received in this area, the store did have some serious challenges in 1992 through 1995. One of these challenges was the opening of the aforementioned Kroger Signature store which brought Randall’s their most serious competitor. Also, Food Lion opened a store, now Food Town, across the street during this period on land once intended to be used by Safeway and Albertsons located one of their first Houston stores down Jones Road in between Randall’s #25 and Randall’s #35, but closer to the Jones & West Randall’s. In addition to the new competition, a tornado hit the Jones & West Randall’s on November 22, 1992 which caused significant roof damage to the store.

In order to keep up with the new Kroger Signature stores and to maintain Randall’s image as a leading supermarket, Randall’s updated the Jones & West store in the 1990s and that is the décor we see this store carrying in the photos. While some other Randall’s stores, including all the ones which are in business today, got Safeway Lifestyle updates in the 2000s after Safeway bought Randall’s in 1999, this store, like the Copperfield Randall’s, did not receive significant updates from Safeway before closing in the early 2010s. That said, perhaps aside from some of the very 1980s looking earthtone tiles at the front of the store, the store still had an upscale, classy look in 2010 when the store closed even if it probably needed a Lifestyle update to keep pace with the competition of the time.

Like with almost all of the neighboring Randall’s stores in Northwest Houston, however, Safeway decided not to keep these stores alive. The Champions Randall’s Flagship store is now the remaining Randall’s in this area, but that store is quite far off for many shoppers in this area. For most people in this area, Randall’s fell off the supermarket radar when the Jones & West Randall’s closed in 2010.

The Jones & West Randall’s building did not sit empty for long after Randall’s left. Even with the immense grocery competition at the Jones & West intersection, H-E-B decided to open a store in the old Randall’s in 2012. It was initially believed that H-E-B intended to put a Joe V’s Smart Shop discount format store at the Jones & West location, but when rumors of this swirled in the community, there were many complaints. Ultimately, H-E-B opened what is essentially a standard format store at Jones & West. H-E-B put a lot of effort into opening this new location. The left side of the shopping center, which once housed a Little Caesar’s (relocated to the other side of the shopping center) and an independent Firestone dealer, was demolished so that the supermarket building could be expanded to 60,000 sq. feet for H-E-B. The old Randall’s gas station, which was a 1990s addition to the store and one of the first modern supermarket gas stations in this area, was demolished immediately after Randall’s left and now serves as a parking lot for the H-E-B, but the old Ninfa’s Mexican Restaurant building was demolished in 2016 to make room for a new H-E-B gas station.

Even with all this additional space, the H-E-B does not have all the departments or variety that Randall’s once had. That speaks to the space inefficiency of H-E-B stores and the space efficiency of 1980s Randall’s stores. Furthermore, while the Randall’s was widely considered to be a beautiful store, the Jones & West H-E-B is, in my opinion at least, a rather ugly warehouse-style store. The concrete floors used by H-E-B are extremely patchy and cracked given the age of the building and the fact that the space was expanded into the shopping center. H-E-B really should have put floor covering in this location, but they didn’t. That, along with the austere department offerings and product selection, which heavily favors H-E-B’s store brands, means that the Jones & West H-E-B is something of a cross between an old H-E-B Pantry Foods store, or a Joe V’s store, and a larger H-E-B. On the plus side, given H-E-B’s use of price discrimination and the heavy competition at the Jones & West intersection which also features Kroger, Food Town, and Aldi, the Jones & West H-E-B does have better sale prices than the larger H-E-B stores in the area. While the H-E-B does get quite busy, in my experience, the store is not quite as busy and chaotic as the larger H-E-Bs in the area. The overall shopping experience is still quite poor, in my opinion, as compared to the ‘Remarkable’ shopping experience that Randall’s once offered in this spot.

There are not many photos or videos of Randall’s stores from the 1980s-1990s which really gives close details of how these stores looked back in Randall’s dominant days aside from this famous video from 1992 showing Randall’s New Generation stores. With that, we’re very thankful to have come across these photos! Furthermore, I know that many Houston retail enthusiasts live in, or once lived in, the FM 1960 W and Jones Road corridors. I am certainly part of that group and so it is simply remarkable to see photos of one of our former local supermarkets before it was turned into an austere discount supermarket. With that, if you have any memories of the Jones & West Randall’s, or any other similar Randall’s, please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below. We love to hear from our readers!