Month: February 2024

Howdy folks, and welcome back to Houston Historic Retail. Today, we’re revisiting an old story from April 2022. Nearly two years ago, I broke the news that Sam’s Club appeared to be in the midst of reopening a club that had been shuttered in 2018. The store, located at 13331 Westheimer Rd, Houston, TX 77077, had only been open for five years when it was closed along with a wave of other stores throughout the …

El Bolillo the Mexican Bakery chain taking Houston by storm, has completed a majority of the exterior work on its new location at Fountain View and 59. The project is a bit delayed from its initial conception, with working only starting after the Mission Bend El Bolillo finally held its grand opening last November. Plans had initially called for the ex-Luby’s Bake Shop to be open by April 2023, but undisclosed hiccups pushed the date …

Howdy folks, and welcome back to Houston Historic Retail! Today, we’re reviewing the history of the Kroger Co’s stores in Rosenberg. These stores have a special place in my heart. I grew up in Fort Bend County, and Kroger was the dominant grocer in Richmond-Rosenberg for a long time. For years, their only real competition came from independents, Weingarten’s, Fiesta, and a few Lucky 7/Minimax locations, even managing to kick Randalls out of the area …

Based on permits filed by HEB, it appears that a new Joe V’s Smart Shop location may be headed to the north side of town. It seems that the grocer is meant to take the spot formerly occupied by Fry’s Electronics in West Road Plaza. Based on the permits, the Fry’s building would likely be torn down, and a new building constructed for Joe V’s. If built this new store would not be the first …

Howdy folks, and welcome back to Houston Hisotric Retail! Today, we’re celebrating a business that is beloved by many in the tech community, Electronic Parts Outlet, aka EPO. Now, many loyal readers will likely ask the question, who in the world doesn’t know about EPO? Well, lots of people. If you were an electronics junkie in Houston during the 90s and early 2000s, you likely read about EPO online. Although in the days of social …

Crews have been working for the past week to complete the transition of about 20 franchised Timewise stores into Honey Farms. These changes are the result of Timewise selling off 64 locations after the C-Store business was purchased by Shell nearly two years ago. The company converted every location they could to Shell but had multiple sites where they could not change the fuel brand from Exxon. The decision to jettison these stores landed them …

Howdy, and welcome back to HHR. Today, we’re taking on new territory, responding to the factitious claim spreading like wildfire that Houston has the second highest grocery prices in the U.S., only behind Miami. Not to sound self-serving, but this is HHR’s domain, and to hear that Houstonians are supposedly paying the same prices as Publix shoppers is obviously untrue. While many sources have reported this data, I first read it in a Chron.com article. …