Category: Random Retail

Howdy, folks, and welcome back to HHR. Today we’re taking a quick look at a Randalls, which I never had a chance to explore! This store, located at 2323 Clear Lake City Blvd, Houston, TX 77062, was a quiet closure at the start of 2020. An HHR reader, and former Randalls employee, believed that these cuts were performance-based, possibly in anticipation of the then not know Kroger-Albertsons merger. Randalls closures over the past few years …

Howdy folks, and welcome back to Houston Historic Retail. Today we’re talking about Whataburger and how their acquisition of a Pacific Northwest Burger chain’s Texas operations led to some of their more iconic Houston restaurants. Before we switch gears to talking about the outsiders, let us spend a minute talking about Whataburger’s history in town. The first Whataburger opened in Houston in 1957 on OST. At the time, Whataburger did not use the iconic A-Frame. …

Howdy folks, and welcome back to Houston Historic Retail! Today we’re taking a look at 5219 FM 1960 W, Houston, TX 77069, a Randalls we last checked in on just over a year ago. Last year’s check-in was a full store tour written by Anonymous in Houston. He goes into great detail about the store and how it has changed over the years. Today though, we’ll examine a more specific aspect of this store’s history, …

Howdy folks, and welcome back to Houston Historic Retail. Since just before the break up of Luby’s, I’ve been following the slow decline of Fuddruckers. Things have not been going great for the chain, as covered in the last couple of updates. Photos from recent trips to company-owned stores paint a picture that food quality has somewhat recovered. The “skinny fries” temporarily served at some locations have been replaced with steak fry-style potatoes, reminiscent of …

Dick’s Sporting Goods debuted two new “House of Sport” locations in Houston this week. A soft opening was held last week at both the Baybrook and Katy locations, expanding existing Dick’s Sporting Goods into adjacent spaces formerly held by Dick’s Field & Stream outdoors stores. Dick’s announced earlier this year that they were discontinuing the Field & Stream brand and would put their focus on the new House of Sport concept. The chain has had …

El Rancho Supermercado, which operates 8 locations throughout the Houston area, has new ownership, as reported by Winsight Grocery Business last week. The Garland-based Hispanic grocer was purchased by “Heritage Grocers Group” a company managed by Apollo Global. The chain entered Houston in 2018, shortly after Albertson’s agreed to purchase a share of El Rancho’s operations. The agreement with Albertsons was intended to help provide operational and property-based opportunities. Some of the programs we saw …