Welcome folks, today we’ve got another edition of Random Retail! This week we have a heavy emphasis on a former Wal-Mart, but not enough that it warrants its own post. If you’ve never experienced Random Retail before, well it’s basically a dump of photos I’ve taken that don’t really fit in with anything else I’m doing at the moment. A good portion of these Random Retail photos come from former Wal-Mart #597 at 7075 FM …
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Anything related to retail that doesn’t fit anywhere else.
A former Safeway with a split personality
When a grocery store closes, it’s not unusual for the space to be subdivided. Over the course of the 20th century, supermarkets became larger and larger, aiming for a broader range. Today’s example is a former Safeway located at 2028 N Main St in Pearland. Holding their grand opening November 11, 1979, the new Safeway was one of Houston’s earliest purpose built superstore locations. The breadth of items available was everything you’d find in a …
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A journey through Buc-ee’s turbulent youth
A quick aside before we begin today’s post. There was an excellent online review I read a while back that somewhat inspired me to write this post. It taxonomized Buc-ee’s locations by size, giving two examples “Baby Beaver” to describe the original stores in Lake Jackson, and Adolescent stores to describe ones like the store off 290 on Muschkee Road. For this post, I propose adding a few more classifications to the taxonomy. A “Papa …
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Permit Roundup: New Retail Spaces Appear Throughout Town, Multiple Remodels, and New Restaurants
Welcome back to our second Permit Roundup, this week our post is a bit shorter than last week. It seems similarly to Demolitions Reports, the Residential/Commercial balance changes from week to week, again with an emphasis on the residential permits. Also, if you didn’t read it in yesterday’s demolition post, my server is running very slowly at the moment, but I am in the process of updating, so please bear with me in the meantime. …
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Retail News: Wait a minute.. who just bought Luby’s and Fuddruckers?!
Happy Friday to you all dear readers! Hitting the “top of the retail charts” this week has been the sale of both the Luby’s and Fuddruckers brands, in addition to multiple locations. This is joyous news as it means you can continue to stuff yourself silly with hamburgers, and Luanne Platters, and as both chains are slated to live on, it’s even possible that some co-brand locations may remain open. With all this excitement for …
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7-Eleven has finally hit the end of the Raceway!
If you’re a regular follower at all of Houston Historic Retail then at some point you’ve seen our coverage of 7-Eleven’s return to Houston which at some point has been a bit contentious. It all started with a post back in February of 2020 when there was scant evidence of 7-Eleven’s return, which had been in progress since 2014! However, by early 2021 7-Eleven had made great strides in not only converting existing locations but …
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Permit Roundup: 7-Eleven lands in Katy, Indoor Paintball in Spring Branch, and Speculation on Washington Ave.
Howdy folks and welcome to… what I’m hoping may become a somewhat regular feature here on Houston Historic Retail. This is what I’m calling a Permit Roundup, the majority of my information for this post is based on permits that have been filed with the City of Houston. The point of this is to provide one of the earliest possible looks at up and coming retail development throughout the Houston area, somewhat in the vein …
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Retail News: Two more Fuddruckers closer to closing, including one in a former Arbys
So, let’s start off this post with the elephant in the room, Fuddruckers as a chain is not going out of business. Luby’s Inc is in the process of liquidation, but they have yet to announce final closing dates for corporate owned stores. While the sale of any remaining Luby’s Cafeterias is low to unlikely, Fuddruckers locations have been somewhat easier to unload. With the majority going to a company named Black Titan LLC, along …
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The not so great, Foodarama Shrinkorama!
Cox’s Foodarama is an independent grocery chain operating out of Houston, Texas, with 8 locations in operation as of this post. The chain simply goes by the name Foodarama in all local matters, but uses their founder’s (Carol Cox) last name to differentiate from the many other grocery stores in the U.S. using Foodarama. During the early days of the net, the confusion mostly came from New Jersey based Foodarama Supermarkets, which has since stopped …
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Retail News: Foodarama sells another former Safeway, and Village Medical comes closer to achieving goal
Foodarama Sells Another Former Safeway According to the Houston Chronicle, property developer Baker Katz has acquired the former Safeway at 1805 Ella Boulevard, which is currently occupied by Cox’s Foodarama. The building was originally constructed as two separate structures, with Safeway forming the right side, and Eckerd forming the left. (Shout out to Anonymous in Houston for figuring that one out!) As such, the two properties were under separate ownership and have remained as such …
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