Former Albertsons #2726 / Randalls #2671 - Katy, TX

525 South Fry Road • Katy, TX
First, I would like to say welcome back. I know I said 2016, but that's when the blog will be operating again. Let's start by showing off a reverse of our first post ever by showing an Albertsons turned into a Randalls, with pictures and information from October 2015. This has the added benefit of essentially becoming an Albertsons again, although it's just not the same.

I can't figure out when the store opened originally, but it closed in 2002, and the Randalls must have come soon after. I should also note that the facade looks to be significantly modified...in fact, you can even see the original walls (white) coming off the sides of the tan Randalls.

The arrangement was probably unaltered from the original Albertsons, with the florist to the left when you stepped in, then passing by the bakery on the left, the deli on the right, as you headed into produce, then the butcher area in the back (there's also a bread alcove area near here). What I tried to do was do some searching that Albertsons was in control. Besides the "it's just better" branding now common to all the Albertsons Companies brands, the only reference to their once and future parent company was a sign advertising hiring. The gang's all here, from ACME in the northeast to those few remaining Super Saver stores in Utah.

There was a large segment of the floor being replaced, the original tiles were being replaced. I'm guessing the ugly not-white tiles are the ones being replaced, though I can't imagine them even being for Industrial Circus, the late 1990s Albertsons décor with corrugated metal.

The integration with Albertsons seems to be coming along. Quite a few Safeway-branded items were still on the shelf though they were being replaced with Signature in many categories.

One thing I noticed that probably other Safeway/Albertsons watchers may not have noticed is that "Better Living Brands LLC" has the exact same phone number and address as Safeway. Some quick Google searching revealed that Safeway Inc. wasn't surreptitiously renamed, but it was originally a name designed to market Safeway brands like O Organics to other stores, which is why you can find a Flickr picture of O Organics showing up at an Albertsons several years before the merger actually happened.

The other big thing I noticed was that the deli is now selling a lot of Dietz & Watson meats and cheeses (as well as "accessories" like spicy mustard), with the deli counter now about two-thirds Dietz & Watson (Primo Taglio seems like its on the way out, happilly). It seems like Albertsons is taking things with Safeway slowly, which is a good thing, considering how "Albertsons"-izing American Stores was largely a disaster (rebranding Lucky within six months being the big one).

The card is still unfortunately in effect, a lot of "Card Price" signs were out, but there were also a lot of "Everyday" prices too. One hopes that the Remarkable card (compatible with other Safeway cards, but had been around almost a decade before the purchase) will just become a rewards card instead of a necessity. Another "good sign" was a paper bag with just the Randalls name...which I didn't take a picture but I have bags from late 2014 that had ALL the Safeway brands post-Dominick's (Tom Thumb, Randalls, Vons, Pavilions, Safeway) on it, so at least Albertsons is giving the Randalls division an identity.

One of the things I noticed is at least with the drop ceilings, it's surprising how dark the Lifestyle stores really are. Albertsons has not added any additional lighting here.

In terms of features, the store is a bit light on them. It has the "Signature Café" sandwich bar (closed for the day, I came in mid-afternoon) and a soup station, as well as a little area near the front to eat products from the deli or bakery. It does not have a Starbucks Coffee, or any other place to get coffee for that matter. The bakery seems pretty good. I got a donut there for 50¢, and it was 10¢ cheaper than Kroger and didn't make me sick either (I've had terrible luck with Kroger's bakeries).

Now, the big question is, what did the Albertsons look like here when it was open? It's relatively low store number (#2726) and likely part of the "first circle" strategy (planting in the distant small towns orbiting Houston, then going for the throat, H-E-B Pantry did the same thing but to great success) so I would guess that it would be 1996, the same year the distribution center (also located in Katy) did. The only hint I got was the fact was the old floor tiles, which might've been with the "Industrial Circus" décor but I don't really know.

I left with a twinge of disappointment, not because I couldn't find any Albertsons leftovers, but because Randalls seemed to never amount to much anymore, and it was easy to see why rumors of its demise had swirled around for years. Despite the push with big 70k+ square feet "New Generation" stores (of which this one isn't, this was built post-acquisition), stores like this (or worse, former AppleTree conversions) aren't very big, their private brands still seem lacking (even to H-E-B), though to Safeway's credit, I'll take "The Snack Artist" over Kroger's packaging anyday, they still can't yet compete with Kroger on price, and the "lifestyle" décor is just the worst...bland, boring, and generally too dark. No wonder they went on the sale block.

Anyway, I do hope to have a living Albertsons on this site soon, unfortunately, it's a little outside the focus of this blog, technically...

News / Off Topic Supermarket Discussions - June through December 2015

Self-explanatory. This will remain up for a few months, have fun.

The Last AppleTree - Bryan

A brief stay as "Food City". Picture from Stalworth Online. This is after a repaint.

Safeway #736
Address: 2001 Highway 21
Bryan TX
Opened: 1986
Became AppleTree: 1989
Closed: 2009?

Rounding out the four Safeway stores that died as AppleTree in Bryan-College Station, today we have the fourth. Originally written as a post on Brazos Buildings & Businesses, this was one of the last group of Houston Division Safeway stores to be built, and the very last AppleTree store to close.

With the larger Weingarten store in the Safeway family just a few miles south, a decision was made to close the original downtown store, and have it replaced with a larger store a few miles north, giving it some more distance from the second Safeway (a third Safeway in town was more toward the east part of town by then).

This particular Safeway opened in early 1986 as store #736 and the anchor of the small Culpepper North, a shopping center at Highway 21 and Texas Avenue. It replaced the store at Texas Avenue and William Joel Bryan (#294, that's now the Health Department). By 1988, however, Safeway had already spun off the division, and in 1989, the new company had changed names to AppleTree.

Almost immediately, of course, AppleTree began to suffer, and the "apples" began to fall. Declaring bankruptcy in early 1992, one of the first to go was the former Weingarten store, and within 24 months, the chain went from 95 to about 6. The new independent chain lost its last stores in Houston and Huntsville within a few years after that, but the remaining few stores soldiered on. The first signs that AppleTree was about to go away forever was in 2002, when the College Station store closed, unable to fend off a huge H-E-B that opened a stoplight away. The Briarcrest store, having been replaced in the late 1980s and one of the most modern, up to date stores in the chain (though hardly up to date or large in modern standards), went next, selling the store to the landlord when the lease ran out, who kept it open and renamed it. Finally, this one was left, and remained until around late 2009 when the AppleTree letters came off in favor of a store called "Super Canasta", which was a Hispanic supermarket (there is a color AppleTree picture on Yelp, albeit tiny).

No bravado followed this passing of the AppleTree name, and for all intents and concerns, AppleTree had been dead for years, just another no-name company that was a client of Grocers Supply Co. in Houston. Super Canasta soon gave way to Food City (owned by El Ahorro) which gave it its own name in a matter of months. Food City/El Ahorro was the first to do away with the old Safeway/AppleTree décor, and in summer of 2013, El Ahorro sold to La Michoacana Meat Market, which downsized and didn't use all the store space (it wasn't very large to begin with). You'll notice that all the stores are supplied by the same company, so the store names still have the same trucks coming in. In the same plaza, there's also a Family Dollar (since day one?) and a few other stores.

By the way, until a few years ago, there was an AppleTree in San Diego, which had been there since at least 2005-2006. The sign looks slightly different than the Bryan ones (looks they painted solid colors over the apples and the logo), but there's no relation, and it's likely they bought the sign from Texas. It's worth wondering about: there were once nearly 100 of these things, some sign exists somewhere.

Finally, here's an article and some small black and white shots of some of the Bryan AppleTrees from a 2004 BTU article. What's interesting is that every single mainstream Bryan supermarket has closed or moved since 2004. The AppleTree on Briarcrest was the least affected, and it closed and reopened with a different name. Everything else moved (Kroger, H-E-B), or flat out closed (Albertsons, the other AppleTree in Bryan).

Former Albertsons #2705 - Houston, TX

Albertsons #2705
7530 Westheimer Road, Houston, TX
Opened: October 18, 1995
Closed: April 2002
What's There Now: DSW, REI

One of the first Houston locations of Albertsons, the Westheimer at Voss location of Albertsons was a bit of an oddity. Albertsons in Houston is remembered as a disaster that would the 2700-series stores, the Houston division stores, to completely vanish except for a handful of stores in Louisiana (today, ironically, part of the Houston division of Albertsons/Safeway). Like what most chains would do, Albertsons decided to start in the suburbs, but it also decided to simultaneously take on more urban areas. While hardly it was "inner city" (it was a few miles out from the Galleria mall and Uptown district, which was just outside the 610 Loop), it had tough competition. Just about half a mile north on Voss, there was a Kroger Signature store (still there), and a bit farther beyond that, a Randalls Flagship (closed and torn down a few years ago for a Whole Foods).

Clearly, the idea of doing battle with entrenched competitors has worried Albertson's, which postponed its Houston invasion for years. Before it pulled the trigger on expansion, the company interviewed hundreds of Houstonians about their shopping preferences. It asked local shoppers if they would accept Albertson's, despite it being a newcomer to Houston and that it is based thousands of miles away in Boise, Idaho.

"We did a lot of research, and people said, 'We don't care where you're from. What are you going to do for us today?' " - Houston Chronicle article from 1995

Of course, we all know the ending to this story, faced with a mountain of debt from the American Stores acquisition, and facing a competitive market, Albertsons pulled out of Houston leaving behind dozens of stores in its wake to be picked up by competitors or simply abandoned. But even in the pre-ASC, more optimistic times, already Albertsons didn't have the size of the Kroger near them or the cachet of Randalls, though it did still have everyday low prices competitive with others and no card (this probably allowed them to replicate in Houston in better times).

The other thing that Albertsons had that its contemporaries didn't was that this wasn't just any street corner, this was Westheimer and Voss, the busiest non-highway intersection in Houston. More than 105,000 cars passed by everyday, and the center where Albertsons was in, the new Westheimer Crossing, was anchored by a Venture, an upscale discounter from the north that was bullish on building stores in Texas.

While Albertsons competed with Randalls and Kroger, Venture competed with Target and Kmart. It was the perfect environment and only Westheimer Crossing had both a large discount store and a supermarket. The Venture didn't last long, however, and closed around 1998. It was not one of the stores that Kmart picked up, as there was a Super Kmart and a Target down the road. With no discount store to replace it, the Venture ended up becoming an Academy. Likewise, Albertsons would have a similar fate. It would close here in 2002 (according to a news article). This particular Albertsons didn't get a replacement grocery tenant, for good reason: H-E-B had just built their first full-line store in Houston just a mile east (the store has since moved to an even bigger location) and of course, Randalls and Kroger had their spots (the Randalls has since been torn down for a Whole Foods, and is right across from a Trader Joe's now).

Albertsons was divided between two new stores, a Linens N Things and a REI sporting goods store (REI is different from Academy, while Academy focuses on things like athletic clothing and a limited supply on fishing and hunting, REI is more outdoors-oriented with mountain climbing and more upscale). Linens N Things went out of business in 2008 and was replaced with a DSW.

I actually went inside the REI in December 2013, and wondered what it must have been like as Albertsons. The backroom (where there was a large sale) didn't have any trace of Albertsons, and frankly, it was a bit hard to get a feel for it when it was half a store (likewise, another trip to an old Albertsons, which I DIDN'T realize was one at the time, happened in March 2014 with the half being a Sprouts that time).

EDIT: I should mention that the facade was completely reconstructed when the two stores came in, originally the entrance (where REI is now) bumped out a bit more.

A bit on Simon David

I apologize for not having a lot of posts on the backburner, most of which what I do have is some old Safeway/AppleTree type posts, and those don't have any good pictures. So, while I am working on the Westheimer/Voss Albertsons and try to get more content, here's an article on the new 1985 Simon David, which was sadly demolished in 2010 for a Tom Thumb Flagship. Simon David was the "upscale" brand that Tom Thumb owned (as if Tom Thumb wasn't already upmarket), which languished under Randalls ownership (a failed attempt to expand the SD brand was replaced with the "Tom Thumb Flagship" name, and under Safeway ownership, Simon David would vanish completely).

I'd like to write a full article on Simon David eventually, but settled on this because right now I'm physically exhausted from a full day of hard labor (my day job doesn't have enough hours) and I don't want to run the risk of being completely burned out from this blog. Here's an article instead from the Dallas Morning News, called "Checking Out a Ritzy Grocery Store", originally published May 9, 1985 by Maryln Schwartz. Enjoy.

I arrived at the grand opening of a North Dallas supermarket thinking I'd gotten the wrong address. It could just as easily have been a deb party.

There was valet parking. Admission was by invitation only.

BMWs, Mercedes and Jaguars were lined up around the location at Inwood Road and University Boulevard. And the women were wearing serious diamonds -- nothing I'd ever associate with buying brussel sprouts and Windex.

"Welcome to Simon David,' a Tom Thumb-Simon David employee said as he handed me a long-stemmed red rose and directed me toward a woman serving white wine.

"You will notice this is the first supermarket in Dallas to have a mezzanine,' he pointed out.

I gazed up, and sure enough, there was a mezzanine running all around the store.

"How do you haul a shopping cart up to the second floor?' I asked.

"There's an elevator, of course,' he explained.

I had come to this grand opening with a friend, but I wandered off on my own to get the feel of the glitzy new surroundings. I didn't get too far.

No strings attached

I had to stop to listen to a quartet playing chamber music and nibble on the duck pate that was being served in the store's cheese and pate bar.

"You're not going to believe this!' my friend said as she rejoined me. She was munching on a piece of almond gateau she found in the pastry area where pastry filled with asparagus also was being served.

"I know,' I said. "I've already seen the cello and the violins. You don't get many string concerts in a grocery store.

"Not that,' she said. "Look at the store directory. This grocery store has a gift-wrap department. I don't mean paper and ribbon to take home. They will actually gift-wrap your grocery purchases.'

I would have gotten more involved in the gift-wrap concept, but something else caught my attention. An employee was pointing guests to the chocolate boutique on the mezzanine.

"You can't miss it,' she said. "It's right behind the perfume boutique and the Simon David's Cafe.

"You have a cafe in a grocery store?' I asked.

"Yes,' she answered. She explained that shopping is much more pleasant when one can relax over a glass of wine or chocolate mousse.

I hopped on the elevator and went right up to check this out for myself. Not only did the menu feature mousse, but also lamb aux honey mustard, lobster and seafood Louie. And the tables were conveniently placed so diners could look over the railing and watch other customers zipping their carts up and down the aisles.

Just past the cafe was the perfume boutique -- an entire glassed-in area featuring everything from Halston to Polo.

No holds (chocolate) barred

Then I saw it -- the chocolate boutique. No Reese's Pieces or Hershey Bars here. No, there were glass cases filled with giant truffles, 15 varieties in all. There also was a potpourri boutique for custom-made sachets and a floral boutique dripping with orchids.

After strolling the mezzanine, I took one more turn downstairs and watched guests get in line to sign up for charge accounts. Then I wandered over to check out the fresh pasta bar that featured such delicacies as salmon and beet pasta.

I counted 14 different varieties of mushrooms at the produce counter and noted that fresh oysters, mussels and live crayfish also were available.

By the time I caught back up with my friend, she told me something was bothering her.

"I think it's wonderful to have duck mousse and white asparagus just a half block away from my house,' she said. "But this is my neighborhood store. Do you think they have things like mops?'

We checked. In a tiny corner of an aisle was one small rack of mops.

A few minutes later, Tom Thumb executive Charles Cullum asked what I thought of the new store.

I had to tell the truth. "If you put in condos,' I confided, "I might move in.'

Cullum smiled. "We didn't think of that,' he said, "but it might work.'

What's interesting about the store is that it many ways, it kind of reminds me of the modern-day Market Street stores, which do have gift shops on the mezzanine (or so I've heard) and several other niceties, though not nearly as over-the-top in terms of other things. However, other things have been standardized in it and other stores: a wine bar, for one, is not unheard of (Whole Foods, the late Hiller's Market).

Former Safeway #714 - College Station, TX

Safeway and later AppleTree was right in the middle of these two stores.

1725 Texas Avenue South • College Station, TX
This one was one I prepared sometime last month: it's the Safeway in my home town. Safeway's Texas expansion was still on the upswing in the 1970s, and in 1976, College Station, Texas got its very own Safeway store (there were two in Bryan), anchoring the large Culpepper Plaza shopping center, with a lease that lasted the better half of a century (I don't recall exactly, but it was in the ballpark of 60 years). The store wasn't all that large by modern standards but adequately sized for the mid-1970s at a size of 40,000 square feet.

What was remarkable about the Safeway was the competition it weathered over the years. I believe by that time, a Piggly Wiggly (originally Brookshire Brothers), arguably the first full-line supermarket in College Station proper, had already closed. It became an AppleTree in August 1989 with the renaming of the Texas Safeway stores, and because I don't have any interior pictures (when it closed I was still fairly young and certainly not old enough to think about taking pictures).

Here's a chart to show exactly what the store was up against. The distance on the main stretch is 2.75 miles between Farm to Market Road 2818 and University Drive, and I've marked some 10(!) competitors besides our store, though luckily none of them competed all at the same time. You'll have to see it at full size to see what I'm talking about here. The map is arranged so to the right is actually the south.

At the time, I'm not sure if the Redmond Terrace Piggly Wiggly was still there (at the southeast corner of Texas Avenue and George Bush Drive, though of course it wasn't called that at the time, and before you ask, it's named after H.W.), but competition included the Skaggs-Albertsons (soon to be Skaggs-Alpha Beta), located at "9", the Lewis & Coker near Kmart (at "8") which would soon be another Piggly Wiggly by 1977, and FedMart (located at "2). The Safeway is marked on the map with a red "S".

In the early 1980s, competition would begin heating up with a Kroger (6), a short-lived Weingarten (3), and a Winn-Dixie Marketplace (5). During that time, FedMart would close, but just as well since our store had bigger problems. Toward the end of the 1980s, Piggly Wiggly would close as well (so at 1989, 9, 5, 6, are all still open).

The early 1990s brought the opening of a massive Randall's (1) and Albertsons (7), but also H-E-B Pantry (4), the no-frills H-E-B spin-off that lacked pharmacies or full-service departments. During all this time, AppleTree at the corporate level was "dropping apples" rather quickly in Houston and those were carted off by competitors by Fiesta, Kroger, Randalls, and independents.

However, this AppleTree stayed open and continued to fight off its competitors, even managing to outlive Winn-Dixie, which closed at some point in the 1990s. By 2000, there were two Albertsons (7 and 1), a dated Kroger (6), and the H-E-B Pantry (4). Another Kroger opened that year, but it was even more toward the south. There was also another Winn-Dixie more toward the north that remained open all the way up to 2002, but these two stores were far away from AppleTree.

Then, in 2002, it happened. A huge H-E-B (10) opened practically across the street from AppleTree (one stoplight up), which had the advantage of being newer, bigger, cleaner, cheaper, fancier, and overall better. Despite decades still left on the lease, AppleTree closed within 9 months of the opening of the H-E-B. Notice that the AppleTree did not compete with a Walmart Supercenter, the Wal-Mart in town wasn't a Supercenter until well after AppleTree closed for good.

I remember that AppleTree remained standing with the logo on the side of the building advertising space for lease, but what would end up happening is that around the mid-2000s, it would be partially demolished for two new stores: a Spec's Liquor and an OfficeMax (the facades have absolutely no trace of the 1970s Safeway design), though the latter would open several years later (the OfficeMax is the one that holds the original Safeway/AppleTree address). This was in conjunction of a redevelopment of the whole shopping center that would tear out the center of it for a Kohl's.

I say partially demolished because the footprint is the same though the facade is totally different, the south wall is totally different, and the back wall is totally different. There used to be extra walls that jutted out behind the AppleTree (see page 6).

AppleTree as a name would cease to exist within a few years when the last two stores were sold off. But despite that, there are traces of the old AppleTree still there. When I was applying to a job at Spec's (I didn't even get an interview), I was trying to look for some traces of the old store. And sure enough, I found some! These scars in the pavement, I believe, were in fact the spaces where the doors to the Safeway/AppleTree were. Of course, today, they lead to nothing.

Between the premature loss of Randalls and the later loss of Albertsons, there's no presence of Safeway or Albertsons in town anymore, which is a shame...

Off-Topic Supermarket Discussions - May 2015

Like what Acme Style is doing, I'm making a new thread to host off-topic supermarket-related discussions, especially since "business" is slow recently (I could go ahead and try to whip up something in the backroom soon), so a lot of those comments have been moved here.

Former Albertsons #2790 - Houston, TX

12400 FM 1960 West • Houston, TX
One of the reasons I stopped updating the blog for a while was a brief stint with Kroger that lasted about two weeks (what exactly my job was or why I left will continue to be a mystery to you) but I strived to look for new things to add nonetheless. So, what better way would be to find an old Albertsons that had been converted to a 700-series Kroger in Houston?

I had my doubts when I pulled in, partially because the Pharmacy sign was a Kroger font and not an Albertsons font like a few other converted stores were. In fact, it had blue Albertsons Food & Pharmacy signs until fall of 2014, based on Google Maps Street View.

Well, it kind of had an Albertsons-like layout, but what got me excited was the fact that I first found the "Baby" flooring where some bottled waters were. Yes, this was indeed a full "Theme Park"/"Grocery Palace" Albertsons that Kroger left partially intact! No more giant bottles of soda, or spinning Meal Center signs, but it was definitely built as such with the full package, like the full Beverage Boulevard flooring. It was a welcome change to the usual modern-day Kroger stores I see, which often just have polished concrete floors. There was even a Garden Center that Albertsons had built, but Kroger had never opened or maintained it. There seemed to be some garden-related stuff leftover, though. Given that a few of today's Kroger Marketplace stores do in fact have outdoor garden centers, I can't see why this Kroger can't revive it, at least seasonally.

Because of the relatively recent changes in the Food & Drug signs, it's entirely possible that the store was remodeled in the last few years.

It's a shame that Albertsons closed (well, sold to Kroger in 2002 at least) because it was a beautiful store (less than two years--it opened in 2000), which unfortunately couldn't save it, because by the time it opened, the American Stores acquisition was taking a toll on the combined company. The other interesting thing about this store was that it replaced one of the very first Albertsons stores in Houston, at Jones and Bridgedown. Maybe it was to get away from its competitors (just one mile south on Jones, there was a Randalls and a Kroger, the former of which is now an H-E-B), maybe the FM 1960 location was the better location, maybe because they were already losing money and hoped that a big fancy location would stem the losses. I'm not sure, but it was definitely a deluxe store, with a full fuel center (the Albertsons Express had a convenience store) and the garden center, which was not standard in most of its markets (as far as I know, only Texas, Louisiana, and Arizona stores had it).

Editor's Note: A number of off-topic posts have been moved to another thread. Please do not comment on this post unless it is about this store or post.

A Texas-Owned Safeway

So, the last time I was in Houston, I took pictures of TWO candidates for this site just within a few blocks of each other: an H Mart on Blalock that was a Randalls prior to 2005 (but forgot to take a picture of the facade), and an older Safeway that was an El Ahorro (but didn't take a picture of the facade each other, just noting the distinctive hexagonal sign signaling that yes, this was a Safeway), and that Safeway was never an AppleTree.

It should be noted though that while Safeway spun off its Houston division in 1988, "Texas Supermarkets Inc." kept the names of the stores as Safeway well into 1989 until the AppleTree name was bestowed on them. Today's post is just an advertisement from June 1989 in the Houston Post, when the Houston division had not yet renamed but still spun off. I don't know what the "5-Star Program" was, must have been a failed plan to turn around the doomed chain and differentiate it in a rapidly changing market.

If things go well by next week, we can have a real post with photos and such, if things don't go as well, then there's one that I thought about earlier that won't have nearly as much pictures. Hopefully it's the former, and the latter will just be posted one of these days.

Bonus Store: The Littlest H-E-B

This post comes from the heels of a trip I took to Houston on Friday. I gotta admit, there was an Albertsons in the area where I went, now serving as a self-storage place. I wanted to get a picture of it, but it was out of the way and I was too embroiled in a four way stop to try to snap a picture of it. Makes me wonder how horrendous the intersection was when both the Albertsons and the Kmart catty-corner were both operating (today, the Kmart serves mostly as the home to "Restaurant Depot").

The subject today is a small H-E-B Pantry store in the Heights. It lost the Pantry name several years ago and now shares the same name as it does with its brethren, except it's a tiny little store that has nothing. Literally nothing. There's a booth for customer service, it has most of your dry dairy goods and a produce department, but no pharmacy, no florist, no seafood counter, no bakery, no tortilla machine, no sushi, no deli! This is the same chain that opened a store with the same name just earlier this month with a full restaurant, a wall of live plants, and 600 types of yogurt. It's as if Wegmans operated stores out of "Super Saver" era Acme storefronts missing most of the departments.

Sadly, once again, I lack interior pictures partly because the interior wasn't all that exciting...it used the same décor package from my c. 2002 store (only with no letters or graphics on the wall, just colorfully painted walls: I'm not sure if it's original to 1997 or not). A white guy in his mid-20s snapping pictures from an iPhone may have attracted some unwanted attention, so we'll have to do with exterior pictures. One of the things that was interesting to me was it's relatively late opening...August 1997, according to a plaque: a full five years after H-E-B started planting Pantry stores in town, and just about three years away from a full-line store opening. The August 1997 date suggests that there was another grocery store from a previous generation here.

The Original Bryan Weingarten - Bryan

From this photo gallery.

Safeway #1111
Address: 1010 Texas Avenue S. (originally 1010 College Avenue)
Bryan, TX
Opened (as Weingarten): 1954
Opened (as Safeway): 1984
Became AppleTree: 1989
What's There Now: Rockies, C&J Barbecue, Bingo Barn

This post was originally based on "Weingarten Supermarket, Bryan" from Brazos Buildings & Businesses

Weingarten was an old-line Houston supermarket chain (it became a real estate manager later), colloquially Weingarten's (which was on the sign). While a lot of Weingarten stores became Safeway stores in Houston (and later AppleTree), not all of them did--the companion College Station store which lasted no more than around 2 months, Weingarten's here lasted for about three decades before it changed hands and closed less than a decade later. Either way, Safeway's time with Weingarten, from picking up many stores in 1984 to spinning off the chain in the late 1980s with the AppleTree division wasn't a long time, but it was important.

Opening on September 1, 1954, the 25,000 square foot supermarket was not only the largest in Bryan, but featured a variety of things unusual at the time, though may seem commonplace today. These included a self-service deli, a general merchandise department "where the housewife can find everything from work clothes to dresses to cooking equipment", a drug and tobacco department, "magic carpet" automatic doors, a lunch counter, a children's daycare area "where they'll find comic books and other things to keep their attention", and a full-service butcher department. Courtesy of John Ellisor, check out the article from which these great facts were derived from.

While I can't imagine much general merchandise fitting in an area that seems pretty small itself for a grocery store, nevertheless, Weingarten stayed in this spot for nearly the next three decades before Weingarten's owners at the time, Grand Union, decided to divest the division.

The Weingarten was unceremoniously sold to Safeway in January 1984 but I don't know if Safeway rebranded the store or closed it and reopened it under its own name. Confusingly, the store remained open as the Safeway store at William Joel Bryan and North Texas Avenue did so (just a mile north) until that store moved in 1986 to Culpepper North (which would later be the last AppleTree store, ever). The sale of many Weingarten stores to Safeway was ultimately the undoing of the Houston division and later the AppleTree chain, as the Weingarten stores added to the Safeway Houston Division store count but were horribly dated by the mid-1980s and there wasn't ultimately any money to renovate the stores.

When AppleTree filed for bankruptcy in January 1992, the store at 1010 South Texas Avenue (originally 1010 South College Avenue, which was the road that ran on the store's west side), this one was one of the first go after just a mere three years, especially considering that the original Weingarten had been going for 30 years under that name. By the time AppleTree completely spun off as a fully independent chain with just half a dozen stores, this store had been referred to as one of the "dogs" as described by Richard Goeggel, VP of AppleTree at the time.

FOUR AppleTrees in town! No wonder College Station-Bryan kept AppleTree through 2009.
Later becoming Williams Furniture Company (see comments on the original BB&B page), part of the store is used to host 1016 S. Texas Avenue, a space used as a nightclub. Some basic Google searching shows that there was "Prime Time Nightclub" and "Whiskey River" recently, the latter predating the former, but not by much, but now it's Rockies (full name: "Rockies The Canyon") moved from its long-time spot at Post Oak Mall. 1018 S. Texas Avenue has been Bingo Barn for years, and at 1010 S. Texas Avenue, C&J Barbecue hangs off of the end, which I didn't get too good of a picture of. Note that despite the visible "old" C&J logo above, it's not the original location.

The pictures are bad because the sun was setting and I was taking it out of the car window (the neighborhood seemed a bit sketchy, although it was still daytime, I might've gotten out). I want to make another return trip to it, see if I can find more things about it. Mysteries abound still: as shown by the gallery linked above, there's a chimney in the back (and not on the C&J BBQ side either) and a lack of modern loading docks. I wondered if it had a railroad spur at one time, and that may be actually the case (a spur definitely ran through the area where Advance Auto Parts is, just south of the store). After all, trucks weren't as commonplace in 1954 as today, and shipping things from Brownsville sounds awfully harrowing for trucks in 1950s-era highways. But I don't know of any grocery stores in the 1950s that actually had railroad spurs. If anyone knows more about this store, such as that.

Safeway's First Island Excursion, The Galveston H-E-B Pantry - Galveston

Last seen alive in August 2008
Safeway #????
6013 Stewart Road
Galveston, TX
Open: 1979?
Closed: 1987
Currently: Odyssey Academy

For all you Safeway fans out there, this one's kind of an interesting story because it's one of those rare cases where Safeway wins a part of Houston. This one was opened in the 1970s (local county appraisal district says built 1970, but ""effectively" 1979, so that would seem the date, given a 1974 aerial is still vacant) as a Safeway, the only one on the island, and for seven years (at the very least) it served Galveston Island as part of the Houston until Safeway Inc. started to run into trouble, getting the axe in 1987 as part of a round of closings that would serve as a predecessor to spinning the whole division a few years later (hence, this never became an AppleTree).

Luckily for Galveston, it did become a grocery store again, reopening as an H-E-B Pantry in 1990, as part of the new H-E-B Pantry concept introduced in 1988. The Pantry stores lacked much of the things that real H-E-B stores had, or even grocery stores of the day. The prototype had "only four departments: grocery, meat, produce, and health and beauty", so things like a deli and bakery, and even a pharmacy, were out of the question.

And so for the next 15 years, the Pantry remained. It brought a smile to my face every time we were in Galveston, because of the familiarity of the H-E-B Pantry, and even moreso (post-2002, such as 2005) after the old local H-E-B Pantry stores closed as they were replaced with full-line stores. It was still operating in 2008 (hence, the picture). But something happened in September 2008: Hurricane Ike. It flooded the store, ruining all the inventory, and H-E-B took the opportunity that a few other retail stores did by taking the insurance money and not reopening (the Dillard's at the Mall of the Mainland as well as the Macy's in Northwest Mall did the same thing). The long-rumored plans to open a full-line H-E-B on the island disappeared, leaving residents with only Randalls and Kroger to shop at.

And here's the ironic thing: Randalls, which was on the island as part of the independent chain's reach across Houston and later purchased by Safeway, was one of the first grocery retailers to reopen. As for this store, H-E-B sold the store to a charter school, which renovated it significantly, even on the outside.

Here are some aerials taken over the years. There's a smaller building adjacent to the Safeway, which I would wager was a drug store, probably an Eckerd. This is what likely sustained the strip after Safeway left (in 2007, this space was vacant and wasn't refilled until Odyssey came in).

Over the years:

1974

1982

1990: First Year of the Pantry

1995

2004. Last time the gas station shows up.

January 2008

September 2008, city evacuated

2010, newly paved parking lot

2012, front part removed

The title refers to Safeway's first excursion to Galveston Island, before anyone tries to point out that Safeway had Hawaii stores in the first part of the 20th century.

Albertsons Memorabilia!

Even though I've admitted that my family were never Albertsons shoppers and even up until recently I tended to view Albertsons as a more expensive version of Kroger, which due to various reasons, I didn't like at the time (that opinion has changed too).

That being said, I do have some miscellaneous Albertsons memorabilia.

This first one is the more ancient one (an old jar of alum in the pantry), and while it does say the company name on the sticker, I've figured it had to have come through a former Skaggs-Albertsons when it dissolved in the late 1970s, as my mother did live in Florida at the time. I'm almost certain that it came from #4314, the Gainesville store that lasted up until 2011.

The second one is more decidedly modern, an Albertsons Pharmacy dropper, and I'm guessing that it came from the local store, #2702, because if we were going to Albertsons, that's the one we'd go to.

Randalls #1857 - Houston, TX

An unremarkable store? (Photo by me. I'm not sure what thing is in the NW corner)
Randalls #1857
Address: 12312 Barker Cypress Road
Cypress, TX
Opened: September 2001

So it's here. Randalls, Tom Thumb, and the entire Safeway family are now married into the Albertsons family, which recently got back together from a painful divorce and the former American Stores rescued from their abusive stepfather SuperValu (okay, I'll stop with the analogies now), but that wasn't yet the case when I stopped at this Randalls after a job interview in the Houston area.

Sadly, I didn't pull out the camera inside for reasons unknown, but I did sample something from the bakery (a chocolate chip cookie baked onto a brownie!) and bought a coffee with the last of my Starbucks card. A bit about this store is that it was built in an era where Safeway had purchased Randalls and was still opening stores before changing gears around the start of the "Lifestyle" era and closing a bunch of Randalls stores in 2005 as market share deteriorated and a market pull-out seemed imminent. I visited this store hoping it hadn't yet been remodeled to "Lifestyle" yet (unfortunately, all of the remaining Randalls did get the do-over), but it was, and altogether wasn't a bad look. Because I didn't actually take any pictures inside, this post is going to be pretty brief.

When the Randalls opened in 2001, there wasn't a lot in the way of grocery shopping in the area. It was the last grocery store along the 290 corridor before a rinky-dink store in the Hockley/Waller area, but even in those halcyon days, Randalls wasn't bursting at the seams. The only other thing close was a 1999 H-E-B Pantry, a small-format store that lacked a pharmacy, deli, and fresh bakery (at least that was the prototype).

Randalls by itself in 2002

Even though the trade area continued to grow with subdivisions continuing to sprawl outward, the greatest threat to Randalls' well being happened in 2007 when H-E-B decided to replace a Pantry store a few miles away (despite the fact that said H-E-B Pantry was renovated at least once in its less-than-a-decade lifespan). Immediately, the new H-E-B zoomed to be the more popular in the area, packing out routinely. It was also larger than Randalls.

H-E-B steals the show in 2010

It's possible that the renovation came in the late 2000s to try to combat the influence of H-E-B.

H-E-B still maintains popularity

Since that time, Randalls has still held on. The H-E-B is cheaper than Randalls as well as not requiring a card, and has continued to march west with new stores while Randalls has stagnated.

If Randalls wishes to take its closest competition on, it's got to lower prices to be competitive (an impediment to the original Safeway Inc.), follow the Albertsons lead and remove the card, and perhaps cannibalize its own shopping center to expand floor space (perhaps making the store deeper by going through the back!) It won't unseat the king anytime soon...Randalls will probably never take #1 in grocery market share (behind Walmart, of course) without an expensive and aggressive building strategy, but knocking Kroger and H-E-B down a few notches will at least secure its place in the market.

As always, comments are appreciated.