Author: Anonymous in Houston

Powerful Kroger Signature Stores Gain A Power Alley

Here’s another look at the power alley, but this time we see the Bakery as well. Note that even with the compact installation of Bountiful, the power alley does still have some of Bountiful’s ‘basket’ signs. Also note the checkerboard flooring tiles. Some of those bakery display carts would have been replaced with tables and chairs back when this store was new and still had the fast food food court.

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 last month’s The Year of Kroger entry, we explored a very early Kroger Signature store built in 1993, the Cypress Station store. In this month’s The Year of Kroger post, we will explore another early Kroger Signature store, Kroger HO-311, the Jersey Village/Steeplechase store located at the intersection of Jones Road & West Road in the northwest suburbs of Houston. While the 1993 and 1994 Kroger Signature stores have more in common than they are different, we will …

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A Sign of the Future: Kroger’s Dominating Signature Format Turns 30

By 1993’s standards, this would have seemed like a very large supermarket!

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 last month’s The Year of Kroger installment, we took a look at a north Houston suburban Kroger, the Kroger on Veterans Memorial. This month’s installment of The Year of Kroger will keep us in the north Houston suburbs and the general FM 1960 corridor. In this edition of The Year of Kroger, we will take a look at the Kroger Signature format and how it enabled Kroger to dominate the Houston market in the late 1990s and 2000s …

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A Warm Greenhouse Welcome to the Year of Kroger here at HHR!

Here is a more distant view of the store. As one can see here, this store does do a fair amount of business. One can also tell from here that the parking lot is not in the best condition these days.

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston with the photos taken by Mike Happy New Year and welcome to 2023, Houston Historic Retail readers! We have many interesting things planned for this year. One of our goals for the year is to cover some of the most interesting Kroger stores in the Houston area. With that in mind, we plan on posting one Kroger post a month in 2023 in order show Kroger’s significant influence in Houston’s retail history. Today’s Year of Kroger post takes us to a surviving Houston Greenhouse Kroger …

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Vintage Ads: Celebrating the 1971 Grand Opening of Braeswood Square

Here is a drawing of Houston’s newest ‘mall’ in 1971! The Bellaire Texan via The Portal to Texas History, July 7, 1971

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston This edition of Vintage Ads will take us back to the grand opening of the Braeswood Square shopping center near Bellaire in Southwest Houston. Braeswood Square’s grand opening was on July 8, 1971 and we’ll be looking at various ads from the July 7, 1971 edition of The Bellaire Texan newspaper which is freely available to read at The Portal to Texas History website. Braeswood Square has been in the news here at Houston Historic Retail in the recent past as the last Belden’s supermarket …

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Redevelopment of the Mall of the Mainland continues in 2022

Here's a sign in the mall advertising the Mainland City Centre redevelopment.

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston with the photos being taken by Mike. The topic of today’s post takes us back to Galveston County for a quick update about a bit of a Houston-area retail comeback story. The Mall of the Mainland in Texas City, TX has long stood for failure and broken dreams. While plenty of malls around the United States, and Houston for that matter, have gone from successful malls to vacant or closed dead malls over the years, the Mall of the Mainland started out as a mall …

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South Shore Harbour Randalls Gets A Colorful Remodel

Without even stepping inside this Randall's, we can tell that it appeals to shoppers who like colorful, classic things!

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston with the photos being taken by Mike. Also, Mike will be the featured speaker tonight at 7 pm (10/5) for the Houston Preservation Society. Click Here to live stream the broadcast! The subject of today’s post here at Houston Historic Retail is something of an oddity here in the 2020s, a suburban Houston-area Randall’s store that appears to be doing quite well. The South Shore Harbour Randall’s is located at 2951 Marina Bay Dr. in League City, TX. For those not familiar with the South …

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North Houston’s Remarkable Handy Randalls in Champions

When this store opened, it had a gable front facade. Safeway gave the front of this store a more traditional look in the early 2000s.

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston with the photos being taken by Mike For close to 50 years, the supermarket featured in this blog post has been one of, if not the, most upscale supermarkets in all of the northern half of Houston. With that in mind, it’s fair to say that this supermarket is truly remarkable! This remarkable store, the Randall’s Flagship store at 5219 FM 1960 W and Champion Forest Dr., started life out as a Handy Andy Supermarket when it opened on April 8, 1974 in the Champions …

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A Look Back at Houston Jewelry, Houston’s Own Catalog Showroom Store

This large sign greeted Houston Jewelry shoppers at their catalog showroom at 9633 Westheimer. (Photo: Houston Jewelry's Facebook Page)

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston Usually when Mike or I start researching a potential blog post here at Houston Historic Retail, we have to dig deep into historical archives to find useful historical information to present here on the blog. This blog post is quite unique in that the subject, Houston Jewelry & Distributing, is a company which has embraced their history and they have made a significant amount of their history available for the public to view online. Our readers in Houston might recognize the name Houston Jewelry and …

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Vintage Ads: Finding Bargains at North Oaks Mall and Elsewhere in 1989

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston Longtime readers here at Houston Historic Retail might remember our Vintage Ads series of posts. It’s been a while since we’ve posted a new Vintage Ads post so it seems like a good time to make a new installment in the series. This installment of the series will look at retail ads from the August 16, 1989 issue of the Houston Chronicle. The thumbnail images included in the post might be too small to read, but simply click on the links below the images to …

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A Tour of Tomball Retail in 2000 and 1965

Welcome to Tomball in 1965! (Captured from the Texas Archive of the Moving Image)

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston Loyal Houston Historic Retail readers may recall that a few weeks ago, we published a blog post showing screenshots from a YouTube video published by Dan Starr and filmed by his wife Amy that showed Tomball’s retail scene in the year 1998. Well, Dan has come through once again as he recently uploaded some video footage taken by Amy and her father in the year 2000. This footage, which was taken right after Y2K, shows some of the retailers from the 1998 video in greater …

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