Houston Historic Retail

Crews have been working for the past week to complete the transition of about 20 franchised Timewise stores into Honey Farms. These changes are the result of Timewise selling off 64 locations after the C-Store business was purchased by Shell nearly two years ago. The company converted every location they could to Shell but had multiple sites where they could not change the fuel brand from Exxon. The decision to jettison these stores landed them …

Howdy, and welcome back to HHR. Today, we’re taking on new territory, responding to the factitious claim spreading like wildfire that Houston has the second highest grocery prices in the U.S., only behind Miami. Not to sound self-serving, but this is HHR’s domain, and to hear that Houstonians are supposedly paying the same prices as Publix shoppers is obviously untrue. While many sources have reported this data, I first read it in a Chron.com article. …

Howdy, folks, and welcome back to HHR. Today, we’re heading back to a thrift store, a place we haven’t been in quite a while! I’m a lifelong thrifter and come from a long line of thrift store shoppers. My grandparents were the most smitten with thrift shops. My grandparents, who were born just before the Depression, would often make a weekend out of hitting up Salvation Army and Goodwill, in addition to many independent and …

The Forever 21 in Memorial City Mall is preparing to close for Houston’s first Uniqlo location. The store is a Japanese-owned casual wear outfitter which only offers private-label merchandise. The retailer has been on an aggressive growth path over the past few years and initially filed permits to open a Houston store at the Galleria in Fall 2020. However, these plans obviously fell through, and permits filed recently indicate Uniqlo plans to renovate this soon-to-be …

Howdy, folks, and welcome back to HHR. Today, we’re talking about the state of Luby’s. It’s been a while since I’ve talked about Luby’s on the blog. However, anyone following my social media knows I often stop by Luby’s. So buckle up for some pedantry into what’s been happening at Luby’s. Going back a few years, most of Luby’s troubles seem to have started when they began purchasing other chains. The two best-known buyouts were …

Howdy folks, and welcome back to Houston Historic Retail! Today, we’re doing something I generally try to avoid by rehashing an old topic, Layne’s Chicken Fingers, or the A&M Version of Raising Canes. To make it a bit unique, we are visiting the “Layne’s Express” on Ella. To make a long story short, Layne’s was the first “chicken finger restaurant” to open up in Texas. The history of chicken finger chains is pretty deep; it …

Thank God It’s Friday! Today, we’re covering the recent closings of multiple TGI Friday’s locations in Houston. If you’ve paid attention to any national news lately, then it shouldn’t come as a surprise that TGI Friday’s closed 36 restaurants, two of which were in Houston (shoutout to HHR reader Kirk who was the first person to share a location list with the Houston location in it). These closing lists have been making headlines for years. …