Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston. I am not a communications or marketing person, but I’ve heard it said before that organizations try to announce news which might be viewed as being unpopular on Fridays since the public is more concerned with their weekend plans and will be less likely to ruminate over the unpopular news. Well, July 23, 1999 was a Friday. It was the …
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Ingredients for Survival: Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of Safeway’s Lifestyle Concept
Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston. Many thanks go to Northwest Retail of the Northwest Retail Blog and to Mike from HHR for supplying the photos for this post. Last year, during The Year of Kroger series here at Houston Historic Retail, we celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Kroger Signature format. The Kroger Signature format dramatically improved Kroger’s position in the Houston market. In this …
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The Year of Kroger Closes with a Silver Anniversary Celebration of the River Oaks Art Deco Kroger
Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston with the photos taken by Mike It is quite hard to believe that the end of the year 2023 is near! This means, of course, that The Year of Kroger series here at Houston Historic Retail is concluding with this post. I’ll reflect on The Year of Kroger series at the end of this post, but first we’ll discuss the …
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Two Westside Kroger Stores With Unique Safeway and AppleTree Designs
Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston with the photos taken by Mike This month’s The Year of Kroger post will be a bit unique for a couple of reasons. For one, this post will be about two different, but similar Houston-area Krogers. Also, a unique aspect of this post is that we will be looking at stores which both started out as Safeway stores, then became …
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Talking about Homeland, AppleTree’s cousin from Oklahoma
Editor’s Note: This post was inspired by a request for information on the history of AppleTree’s “cousin” from Oklahoma, Homeland. The requester, Sing Oil Blog, has provided a companion post reporting on a Homeland-owned store in Georgia. Howdy, folks, and welcome back to HHR. Today we’re looking at the history of a much more successful cousin of AppleTree, Homeland. Their history begins way back in 1929 when Safeway entered Oklahoma by acquiring a Tulsa-based chain, …
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Retail News: Foodarama adds new location with Texas City Food King on their roster
Local grocery chain Foodarama opened a new location last week at 915 North 6th St in Texas City. The store was purchased directly from the previous operator Food King and was not closed for the changeover. This newest Foodarama represents the first new location of an independent Houston grocery chain since 2015, when Pyburn’s opened its third location. As of this article, Foodarama has eight locations throughout the Houston area. Other independent grocery chains in …
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Vintage Ads: Celebrating the 1971 Grand Opening of Braeswood Square
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 …
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Return to Food King, one of the last Weingarten’s out there
Howdy folks, and welcome back to Houston Historic Retail! If you’re a longtime reader of the blog, then you might recognize today’s location, Food King! A former Weingarten, still using much of their Grand Union decor update. This store is a gem, locally owned by a Texas City resident, and honestly pretty dang cheap! If you’re interested in the history of this store and more detailed information on decor overlap, then check out my post …
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A postmortem in-Spec’s-tion of Rice Epicurean
Howdy, folks, and welcome back to HHR! Today we’re checking in on the former final Rice Epicurean. After closing late last July, Rice left nearly everything in the store without their name on it, for new tenant Spec’s. While I attempted to reach out to Spec’s about plans for their future store, I did not hear back. At the moment, nothing has been changed structure-wise, and as of this article, I couldn’t find any permits …
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Weingarten’s lives on through Kroger in the Heights!
Weingarten’s was a grocer I never knew, and if I had to take a guess, it’s a store most of my readers never knew either. Even though Weingarten’s was long gone by the time I was around, the name was still eponymous for a grocery store in Houston. As well, despite a less than stellar exit, the opinion most Houstonians held of Weingarten’s was still overwhelmingly positive, with most chalking up those final years to …
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