Howdy folks, and welcome back to Houston Historic Retail. Today, we’re taking a walk down memory lane and looking at some retro photos of the Santa Fe Junction Shopping Center, and discussing the grocery store it once housed. The Arlan’s, which was the subject of a previous HHR post in early 2023, recently closed and is an interesting piece of retail history. In my last post, the history of Big Chief was unclear, and although I don’t have a complete history ready to write out, we now have more pieces to this puzzle. This article was suggested by an employee of the Santa Fe Junction Shopping Center, who is part of the family that formerly owned Big Chief and still owns the center. Let’s start from the beginning, though. The Big Chief name first appeared in the Houston area around 1950. A grocery store in the Highlands area, which has long since been demolished, rebranded itself as Big Chief in either 1949 or 1950. This new name was likely the result of a change in ownership and the formation of a new partnership. A second store opened shortly after in Texas City, and by 1952, the owners of Big Chief invested with a few others to acquire an existing store in Baytown. The chain was sold essentially as a franchise, allowing different operators to all use the Big Chief name even if a store was sold. Around 1954, the Knox family became involved with the Big Chief in Texas City. At the same time, other operators took over the Highlands and Baytown locations. By the 1970s, Big Chief, as a cooperative chain, began to fall apart.
While the other owners of Big Chief had stayed stagnant, Billy Knox had been working hard to expand his family’s empire. He had first expanded into convenience stores named Little Chief. This companion chain to Big Chief would grow to 13 locations before the family sold it in 1981. Billy Knox would also begin developing shopping centers in 1970. While Mr. Knox would unfortunately pass away in 1974, the family would continue expanding their business empire. Looking for new areas to construct a shopping center, they identified Santa Fe as a potential location in need of a grocery store, and in 1983, development began. The shopping center was planned in multiple phases. The first would include a pharmacy, along with approximately 15,000 square feet of leasable space. The second phase involved a grocery store, Big Chief, which, of course, the family owned, and the final phase was an additional 10,000 square feet of lease space. With the ailing Holiday Foods as the only other competition in town, the community gladly welcomed this new retail development. The Knox family later sold Big Chief to long-time manager Tab Watt, who sold it in 2011 to Arlan’s. The store was closed in May 2025 without much warning. While the community still has an HEB, the property management is working to bring in a new tenant. A special thanks is owed to Courtney Daniel for helping answer questions and providing the photos in this article.
I was a merchandiser that was in and out of Big Chief all the time. In 2011 when Tab Watt sold the store I have to say I was not a fan of Tab at all. He was awful to vendors, talked really bad to you. So I was not sorry to see him go. One christmas holiday Tab was so rude to me that his wife pulled me to the side to apologize.
Lastly- I guess its worth mentioning Tab didn’t disclose the fact that the property was falling apart and had a TON of maintenence issues that grocers supply had to address after tab took the money and ran. I remember they had to jack hammer the floors to fix a broken sewer line. The last year Tab owned the store he became worse than ever. He would not spend any money to fix anything, he even was making sure to not buy any new equipment and was watching everyones hours like a hawk. None of the employees had anything good to say about him and frankly, neither do I.
He lacks the human decency quality. Good riddance and I hope he reads this one day.
prior to chief foods was that house a safeway o something