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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A Tour of Tomball Retail in 1998
Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston Tomball might seem like just another Houston suburb today, but nearly a quarter of a century ago in 1998, Tomball was a bit of a distant place to visit even for those of us like myself who lived in the Northwest Houston suburbs in the Willowbrook Mall area. That said, I did visit Tomball quite frequently in the 1990s and through the turn of the Millennium period. Given that, what a surprise it was recently when I came across a video on YouTube posted by …
Continue readingSpeckerd’s Part Two, Fun Size Bottles
Howdy folks, and Happy New Year’s Eve! In celebration of what you’ll likely be doing tonight, let’s take a look at a place where you can pop-corks. Houston’s, most prominent liquor store chain, Spec’s. We will again be taking a look at a Spec’s that is housed in a former Eckerd, making this part two of Speckerd’s! In our last episode, we discussed how overbuilding in Houston hurt area drug stores, leading to some stores that sit vacant for years if they’re ever reused. While the overbuilding wasn’t as bad for Eckerd who was the redheaded stepchild of JCPenney at …
Continue readingSpEckerd either way you’ve gotta show ID to buy stuff!
Houston has a preponderance of former drug stores. Many have found new uses, and seemingly just as many continue to sit vacant. The vast majority of these failed pharmacies come from overbuilding over the past 20 or so years. The issue wasn’t specific to Houston, as evident by the recently announced CVS closures, but it sure had an early start here. Most of it began around 2003 when CVS entered the Houston market, their desire to expand was met by with a swift response from Walgreens who planned an expansion in Houston of their own. With CVS, and Walgreens both …
Continue readingMy Summer Vacation: A CVS on the Riverwalk
In 1993 Eckerd opened a new drug store at 211 Loyosa San Antonio, with an entrance on the Riverwalk, this location is now arguable “One of the best known CVS locations in Texas”. With the CVS acquisition of Eckerd in Texas (and a few other places), the store changed names and continues to operate as a bit of an oddity. Let’s start off with the history of the building. Built sometime in the mid 1800s, likely after the Alamo, but possibly during the final days of Texas’ independence, anyway you see it this is an old structure! The building originally …
Continue readingRandom Retail: Two out of place Big Box Retailers, and Two former Burger Joints
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 1960 W., Houston, TX 77069. I had originally planned to go a bit more in-depth on the location, but found myself lacking any good photos …
Continue readingThe 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 trading under that name. The chain was founded in 1973, in a building with an already storied history. Having been built by Belden’s when they …
Continue readingThrough the Annals: A Guide to Retail History in Annual Reports
Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston Researching the operations of a publicly traded company here in the 21st century is most certainly not a very difficult thing. After all, there are numerous reports about companies available through their own websites and through various websites that can all be accessed very quickly. However, those who were around before the rise of the World Wide Web might remember that it was quite difficult to obtain information about companies back in the day. One thing which could be requested from libraries or by contacting …
Continue readingCVS abandons an Eckerd’s concept
Welcome back loyal reader in this week’s post we’re talking about a CVS location that started out life as Eckerd. Most Houstonians can recall when Eckerd went away and CVS debuted in Houston. Many within our fair city thought that this was a long planned transition and a national phasing out of the chain. It at least seemed that way from the customer point of view. Based on the statements CVS was making it seemed that Eckerd was set to disappear from the entire country the reality was that CVS had only acquired Eckerd in certain states. Specifically in states …
Continue readingWhos been painting Eckerd?
Remember Eckerd? Sure you do, it was the second largest pharmacy chain in the United States at one point! And its blue and white color scheme with purple, red, and gold accents are peak “90s aesthetic”. Even if you’re not familiar with the store, you’e likely to agree they looked awesome! Eckerd stores looked nice, had locations nearly from coast to coast and were all unfortunately doomed. This was largely due to the 1996 merger of Eckerd with JCPenney’s Drug Store division. Their stores were headed by Thrift Drug, along with multiple other chains they had acquired throughout the East …
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