Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston with the photos taken by Mike in July 2024
2024 may not be The Year of Kroger here at Houston Historic Retail like 2023 was, but we still aim to bring our readers the latest in Houston Kroger developments! With that in mind, this post will be about the recent renovation which took place at Kroger HO-737 located at 12400 Farm to Market 1960 Rd W, Houston, TX 77065. This store has been a Kroger since 2002, but in reality, it is a Krogertsons, a Kroger in a former Albertsons. HHR guest blogger billytheskink presented his local Krogertsons last year during The Year of Kroger, but now it is my turn to discuss my local Krogertsons! Well, actually, there are two Krogertsons near me which I both shop at frequently, HO-737 and Kroger HO-748 located at 10010 Cypresswood Dr, Houston, TX 77070. HO-748 is a former Albertsons Blue & Grey Market store and is similar to billytheskink’s Krogertsons.
On the other hand, HO-737 is something altogether different. HO-737 started out as Albertsons #2790 and originally opened in 2000. Albertsons #2790 featured Albertsons’ unique Grocery Palace décor package which has been discussed before at HHR in the context of a Randalbertsons Grocery Palace and a Food Town Grocery Palace. In the case of the Food Town Grocery Palace, that was Albertsons’ first ever Grocery Palace nationally and it is quite the retail enthusiast landmark and museum given all the Grocery Palace remnants Food Town has kept around at that location. This is also not the first time that we have looked at a Krogertsons Grocery Palace here at HHR, but in many ways, #2790/HO-737 is the most spectacular of the Houston area Krogertsons Grocery Palaces.
Although Albertsons #2790 opened in 2000, the story of that store goes back to Albertsons’ earliest days in Houston in 1995. For more on the backstory of this store, I recommend reading the March 2023 The Year of Kroger post about Kroger HO-311, which is located nearby at the intersection of Jones Rd. & West Rd., and the 2023 post about the former Randall’s #35 also located at the Jones & West intersection. Albertsons #2790 replaced Albertsons #2708 located at 10535 Jones Rd., Houston, TX 77065. Albertsons #2708 was one of Houston’s first Albertsons stores when it opened in 1995 and it featured Albertsons’ Blue & Grey Market décor package. In fact, it was a near clone of billytheskink’s Krogertsons when that Krogertsons was originally an Albertsons.
Although Jones Road remains a very viable space for supermarkets, especially for Kroger who has two current Signature store locations not far apart on Jones, the retail patterns at FM 1960 W. & Jones near where Albertsons #2708 was located started to change not long after it opened in 1995. The Kmart at that intersection, which was originally next to Kroger HP-171 as discussed in the aforementioned The Year of Kroger post about Kroger HO-311, moved to the old Venture building near Willowbrook Mall in 1997. Although the Target, now Ollie’s and Shoppers World, next to #2708 would stay until 2006, Albertsons got the sense that the nearby FM 1960 W & N. Eldridge intersection, which was undeveloped as far as retail went at that time aside from the John Eagle Honda car dealership which later moved to a larger location on US 290, would steal FM 1960 W & Jones’ retail thunder and so they decided to move from their five-year-old location to what became Albertsons #2790. Albertsons #2790 and their co-anchor, Kohl’s (one of Houston’s first Kohl’s locations), were the first big box-type retailers to open at FM 1960 W & N. Eldridge. Wal-Mart would open a Supercenter at that intersection around that time and, eventually, Home Depot would open a store there as well. Target moved their Steeplechase location which was next to #2708 to the FM 1960 W & N. Eldridge intersection in 2006. While Albertsons may have struck out at picking a good location for #2708, they picked a great location for #2790.
Not only did Albertsons #2790 have Albertsons’ then-cutting edge Grocery Palace décor package, but it had a couple of other relatively new features Albertsons was promoting at the time. The more common feature was the Albertsons Express C-store and gas station. In fact, the Houston Chronicle has a 2001 photo from #2790’s Albertsons Express showing someone fueling their truck before heading on a trip to Florida. Is it possible that the Albertsons Express customer in that photo is an Albertsons fan who reads the Albertsons Florida Blog?
The less common feature, and one which still inspires much discussion on the Internet, is Albertsons’ large garden center. #2790 had an attached indoor garden center next to the frozen foods department. Next to the indoor garden center was an exterior garden center which featured live plants and Christmas trees for sale. Although it is hardly unusual for supermarkets to sell garden products and plants seasonally, in fact Kroger is quite famous for it, having an elaborate year-round garden center with specific facilities for it was very unusual in 2000 and, in many ways, it still seems very odd even today.
Although Albertsons was bringing cutting-edge stores to Houston, shoppers didn’t quite warm up to their stores. Albertsons lagged behind local market share leaders Kroger and Randalls, which was sold to Safeway in 1999, and decided to exit the Houston market in 2002. Several of Houston’s existing grocers, including Randalls/Safeway, Food Town, and even HEB, elected to purchase some of Albertsons’ former locations around town. However, it was Kroger who ultimately picked up the most former Albertsons locations. Kroger was already the Houston market share king in 2002 and the addition of several choice, almost-new Albertsons locations solidified their grip on the Houston market for the next several years.
Given that Kroger was still aggressively building new Signature store locations in around 2002, some in shopping centers which were supposed to house Albertsons locations which were never built due to Albertsons leaving Houston, perhaps Kroger’s budget wasn’t sufficient to fully Krogerize their Albertsons acquisitions right away. This was certainly the case with Krogertsons HO-737. While the Blue & Grey Market décor Albertsons were generic enough to fit in well as Kroger locations, the Krogertsons with Albertsons’ Awnings and Grocery Palace décor were true oddballs when Kroger operated them with the Albertsons décor nearly completely intact. After all, they were considered oddballs even when they were Albertsons!
One thing Kroger did eventually do to HO-737, which they didn’t commonly do to other Grocery Palace locations they picked up, was to install a drop ceiling in the store. While Safeway also installed a drop ceiling at the aforementioned Barker Cypress & Clay Randalbertsons, Kroger’s drop ceiling was a little cleaner in design in that it actually covers most of the HVAC ducts unlike the Randalbertsons drop ceiling.
Another early decision Kroger made with HO-737 was to discontinue the garden center. Kroger’s initial plan for the former garden center space, at least the indoor part, was to turn it into a Kroger Dollar Store. Dollar stores were all the craze in the Houston area in 2003, especially with all the publicity the then-new to Houston 99 Cents Only Stores were getting, and so it seems Kroger decided to get in on the action. KRIV-TV even did a news segment about the Kroger Dollar Stores when they opened in 2003.
Although the Kroger Dollar Stores might have seemed like a good idea at the time, they didn’t last long. Eventually, the garden center space was closed off for good and Kroger decided to use that space to build a more traditional pharmacy department. Prior to this, Kroger was reusing Albertsons’ customer service/pharmacy/floral island at the front of the store. Many shoppers, including myself, found this design to be odd, if not annoying. The island was removed entirely with a more standard floral department serving as the replacement in that space. The customer service desk was relocated to the front wall of the store where Albertsons’ old video rental department, photo finishing department, and in-store IBC Bank branch were originally located.
Another change Kroger made to HO-737 in more recent years was to close the Krogertsons Express C-store and gas station, tear it down, and replace it with a standard Kroger fuel-only station in 2020-21. I can’t say for sure why this was done. Kroger generally does not operate C-stores, but they aren’t unheard of and they have kept some Krogertsons Express locations alive. The most likely explanation is that perhaps Kroger needed to give up a little bit of land for the current road construction going on at the FM 1960 W & N. Eldridge intersection and that necessitated a reconstruction of the gas station.
Aside from these changes, HO-737 retained a very Albertsons-like look until the summer of 2024. In around 2012, the store was given Kroger’s extremely popular Bountiful décor package. Although Kroger pulled up the floors at many Grocery Palace Krogertsons locations during the Bountiful era, this didn’t happen at HO-737. Until recently, the flooring at the store was entirely an Albertsons holdover. Pseudo3D, friend of HHR and author of Carbon-izer.com, documented this aspect of HO-737 when he made a blog post about HO-737 in 2015. The bakery, which is still located in the same spot as it was as an Albertsons, still had the distinctive wood-like floor design. The Beverage Boulevard still existed on the floor even though Kroger moved the soft drink aisle over a little bit. The crisscross pattern in the beer & wine department still existed, and still exists today. The alphabet blocks on the floor from the baby items aisles still existed and so did the stars and the southwestern-like design in the dairy/frozen food department.
I visited HO-737, as I often do, in July 2024 and noticed in the parking lot that the color emanating from the windows at the front of the store was slightly different than what I was used to seeing. It was more of an aqua blue rather than the green I was used to seeing. My immediate reaction was one of horror! I immediately recognized the aqua color as the vestibule color of Kroger’s Artisan décor package, one of Kroger’s newer and supposedly more upscale décor packages described here, along with Bountiful, by Retail Retell of the Mid-South Retail Blog. I also wondered if the store would pull up their Grocery Palace floor and replace it with horrible tile-scarred concrete.
During my initial visit to the store during the renovation, the floor had not been touched yet, but the walls were painted with Artisan colors. This is to say that the bulk of the store was painted plain white. Although Artisan is supposedly an upscale décor package, it mostly consists of plain white paint, as captured at a Fred Meyer (Kroger) store in the Pacific Northwest by Northwest Retail of the Northwest Retail Blog, and very cheap and unconvincing looking fake wood signage elements. It is, in many ways, a big downgrade from the Bountiful décor package, but at least the white colored walls brighten up the store a bit as compared to Bountiful. It is not that this store was dark when it had Bountiful, but certainly white walls help brighten up a space more than Bountiful’s brown walls.
Curiously enough, during that first visit during the renovation, Kroger had made temporary department signs using old Bountiful letters and black-painted plywood. What a sight! I visited the store a handful of times later in the month and saw the renovation progress. I apprised HHR’s editor, Mike, of the situation and he photographed the renovation in progress. What Mike and I discovered is that although Kroger was pulling up parts of the floor, the parts mostly around the perimeter ‘race track’ of the store, they were not pulling up the entire floor. Also, it appeared that the parts of the store where the tile was pulled up was being replaced with the same type of fake wood vinyl floor that Kroger had used at the Texas City Kroger.
We were relieved that Kroger wasn’t putting in one of their terrible looking concrete floor specials at HO-737, but we were still sad to see that many of the Grocery Palace aspects of the floor were being removed. The bakery and dairy/frozen food tiles were replaced with the new fake wood floor. Now, while the old Albertsons bakery wood floor design looked much better than the Kroger fake wood, it is probably fair to say that the dairy/frozen food area was looking very dated and needed to be replaced.
As for the center part of the store, the Albertsons floor mostly remains. However, the only patterned area of the floor which remains is in the beer/wine department. The Beverage Boulevard, alphabet blocks, checkerboards, and stars are all gone now. I don’t know if Kroger replaced those tiles or if they were simply able to peel up decals to reveal the original floor. Although the remaining Albertsons tiles are nearly a quarter of a century old, they don’t look worn at all.
While I was shopping at HO-737 during one of my renovation-era trips to the store, I overheard a customer talking to an employee and asking why they were renovating the store. This was said in a tone which implied that the customer was not pleased with the renovation. I can’t say I completely disagree with the customer. Bountiful still looks fresh to me and it certainly looks more upscale than Artisan. That said, although I am not a fan of Artisan, the remodel still looks better than many other recent Kroger remodels especially since Kroger decided to semi-retile the store rather than use their typical Cost Cutters tactic of leaving behind a terrible looking tile scarred concrete floor. It is my hope that Kroger will continue to use proper floor coverings in future remodels.
With this recent remodel, hopefully HO-737 will be around for many more years. Sure, the store looks a bit less Albertsons-like now than it did before the remodel, but the majority of the Grocery Palace layout remains in place all these years later and there is still one part of the store which has an original Grocery Palace floor pattern. HO-737 still has more of an Albertsons-like look than the majority of other Houston Krogertsons, even the ones which have not been renovated in years. With that in mind, if you have any comments, feel free to leave them in the comments section below. We love to hear from our readers!
Sorry to see this store get Artisan… it definitely does look rather dull now, unfortunately. Glad to see the beer and wine flooring remain, at least! But yeah, I’m not surprised Bountiful (and of course Grocery Palace before that) looked much better here. Thanks for the links as well!
It is kind of funny, but this Krogertsons was actually a rare Kroger in my area which had/has a full-sized implementation of Bountiful! Most of the other built-by-Kroger Krogers in my area are Signature stores which have wedding cake-type ceilings with lower ceilings over the power alley and so they have low-height installations of Bountiful. The Greenhouse stores usually had some kind of cheap installation of Bountiful. Thus, if you wanted to see Bountiful in the intended large-size form, the Grocery Palace Krogertsons was the place to go! Now, sadly, it has Artisan which has nothing that anyone would want to see unless one likes white walls and very fake looking wood, lol.
Wow, it’s nice to finally see your local Krogbertsons! I agree that Artisan looks sparse in here (especially with the plain white dropped ceiling paring with the plain white walls). Has Kroger since installed more signage?
As for the tile, while the Grocery Palace patterns are neat to see for a retail enthusiast, they don’t look that great to the everyday shopper who sees alphabet blocks on the water aisle. I have to say that the new flooring is quite the upgrade to bring it out of the early-2000’s, but that is a relatively low bar with one of the few lower options being Kroger’s standard concrete floors. You can certainly enjoy that victory! Crazy to see the light fixtures and old garden center in a supermarket as well.
I really thought that this store, in Bountiful form, would have been a good The Year of Kroger candidate, but we had more good candidates than we had months in 2023 so this store didn’t make the cut. I was hoping to do the store sometime this year, and we did, but I was hoping to do it in full Bountiful form! I always enjoy seeing retail blogger’s local stores, especially ones they shop at frequently, and so now it is everyone else’s turn to see one of my local Krogers. The Jones & West Kroger featured in March 2023 The Year of Kroger post is another Kroger in my area that I shop at pretty frequently.
Although the hanging signs are one of Artisan’s better-looking features, this store does not have many of them since most of the departments are out against walls unlike what they are like in typical stores which get Artisan like Marketplace stores and Fred Meyer stores. Given that most Kroger locations have most of their departments out against a wall, I really wonder what Kroger was thinking making the walls so bare in Artisan. Frankly, even at the stores with lots of hanging signs, Artisan still looks like a dud! This is the only store I’ve seen Artisan in in-person, but based on photos I’ve seen, I’ve yet to see it look good in any installation. Even with Remix, I can think of an application or two where it looks okay. I can’t even say that about Artisan!
I really do wonder what the ‘average’ shoppers of this store thought of all the strange flooring elements! It must have seemed so random if someone didn’t know about the history of this location. At least the floor now looks normal now and I’m glad that Kroger didn’t go with the tilescar look here. At least the drop ceiling and the proper flooring give this store somewhat of a finished look even if the walls look bare!