Rummel Creek Village is a very interesting shopping center. With wooden shingles, ample trees, and vintage facade, you almost feel closer to the Hill Country than Houston here. Despite fitting stylistically with the surrounding Memorial Villages area, Rummel Creek Village is actually entirely within Houston. It’s anyone’s guess as to how it has survived unchanged for so long, but thankfully with age the design has only gained charm. It almost looks like something that would …
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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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The Randall’s 1987 Food Fest
Today we’ll be taking a look at the 1987-88 Randall’s Food Almanac. What is a Food Almanac, you might ask? Well, it’s a year round collection of recipes, paired with coupons and vintage advertisements. Using a Food Almanac as advertising was not unique to Randall’s, but its debut was tied to a much bigger event, The 1987 Randall’s Food Fest. This was the third year of the newest celebration Randall’s had to offer. From samples …
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Taking a trip to Grocery Stores of the Past (Part 1)
Editor’s note: In lieu of an April Fools prank this week’s post comes to us as a guest submission from commenter Anonymous in Houston. I’ll be back Sunday with the demo post -Mike! The Portal to Texas History website operated by the University of North Texas Libraries offers a tremendous database of primary historical resources including videos, newspapers, photographs, and more. While there is a lot at the Portal which might be relevant for those …
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A 35MM Walk down memory lane
This last summer I took some time to visit friends and extended family in Cleveland, Ohio. The whole Northeastern Ohio region is like a time capsule for retail. Chains you thought went bust like Rax still reign king in small towns. While visiting I stopped into Discount Drug Mart and was surprised to learn that they still develop film. I bought a roll, and a camera from Goodwill. Here are some of the photos I …
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The Incredible Shrinking A&P
Excuse the brief update. I have had quite the busy week! More content should be coming soon, including a small retrospective of pictures that don’t really fit anywhere else. For now though enjoy A&P. A&P is not a well known grocer in the Houston area. They never had their own division, and were based out of Dallas. The number of stores I have seen varies somewhat. My estimation has it around 5, no more …
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Rice Epicurean, taking the term chain to the extremes
The chain, Rice Epicurean, is the result of many adaptions and “mutations” of a family-owned grocery store originally named “Rice Boulevard Food Market”. You can read more about the history of the chain overall on my Rice Food Markets Page. This post takes a brief look at the chain as it stands today, with one store, and six former properties. Rice Epicurean #201 | 2500 Rice Boulevard The original Rice Boulevard Food Market opened in …
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A look at one of Houston’s Former Food Lion Locations
First, I’d like to welcome you to a new feature of Houston Historic Retail, blog posts. I’m still experimenting with content styles, and want to explore this avenue. I may or may not stick with it, but for sure the content will remain. So with the possibility of this not sticking around for long, let’s start by talking about a store that did not stick around for long, Food Lion. Food Lion as mentioned elsewhere …
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