[FROM THE ARCHIVES] Albertsons and Cinnabon

Rather than a store post today, let's take a look at one of the few food partnerships Albertsons did before the ubiquitous Starbucks. This article from Supermarket News, titled "Albertson's unit opens its doors to in-store Cinnabon" appeared in the August 26, 1996 issue.

AUSTIN, Texas - The first Albertson's to house Cinnabon retail outlet coincided with the opening of a 65,000-square-foot food and drug store here at the end of last month.

Dubbed "The Village Market," the new Albertson's is the first chain unit to lease space within the store to other businesses, according to a statement.

Located in the front of the store near the entrance, according to Cinnabon spokeswoman Sharon Roberts, the facility offers its trademark cinnamon rolls, as well as coffee, orange juice, lemonade and an iced chocolate mocha drink called Mochalatta Chill.

Only time will tell how Cinnabon's arrival will affect Albertson's in-store bakery, said a spokeswoman at the store's Boise, Idaho, headquarters.

"It's a very good question, and right now Albertson's is searching for answers since it's a new experiment, and it's only been a few weeks in operation," she said. "We are looking at this closely."

A Cinnabon development executive said it is currently looking at several other Albertson's sites.

"We're definitely nurturing the relationship with Albertson's, but nothing has been confirmed yet," the executive said. "It could be that we'll be in more Albertson's stores in Texas or in other places. We just wanted to open [the Austin store] and see how it goes, and so far it's just been terrific."

The article doesn't say which store it was, and since Albertsons pulled out of Austin a decade ago, this store has definitely closed. Still, it does look at one of the ways Albertsons was doing in the 1990s. I presume the Cinnabon rolls were the same as ones offered at many (all?) Schlotzsky's shops these days, shipped in frozen. I know Albertsons had a Krispy Kreme program as well in the early 2000s but it wasn't done in-house, they were simply sold from nearby Krispy Kreme restaurants, which sounds like cheating at best.

Randalls #1066 - Houston, TX

12850 Memorial Drive • Houston, TX
A Randalls today won't bring tears to eyes like seeing the deterioration of Sears stores (at least mine, the Willowbrook Sears actually looks decent), but was once supposed to be the best isn't going to impress many people these days.

A two-level shopping center!

Opened in late 1996 as a 60,000 square feet store, this store put the screws to a tiny Lewis & Coker (the last store in the chain, it once operated the Kmart Foods stores from College Station to Galveston) less than a mile east and was equipped to be a Randalls Flagship store. Sadly, while the Randalls remains popular and busy today, no "Flagship" features remain of this store. Flagship stores from what I heard all had an upper level added (we'll talk about that more when I cover the Bellaire store) to house a restaurant. I don't know if Randalls here has an upper level, if it did, it's definitely inaccessible (the shopping center itself does, I would be surprised if the store here didn't). Despite a Walgreens right next to it, the Randalls does has a pharmacy. It has also been upgraded to the Lifestyle layout, though some remnants remain of its past. By the time it opened in 1996, Randalls' financial situation was in need of help, their net store count (openings to closings ratio) had flatlined, and Kroger's new Signature stores were starting to dig into the market share.

It's a bit washed out, but the sign mentions sushi.

Originally, the floor featured some sort of brick-like tile around the perishables, which Safeway later covered with their tile. I'm pretty sure that the store only remodeled once or twice (the latter being Lifestyle, of course), despite its age. These pictures were taken just soon before the chain's 20th anniversary (taken in January/February 2016).

The bakery has a refrigerated case, which allowed to carry things like bread pudding, and even though it wasn't great (I can't expect world-class stuff here), it was nice because most supermarkets I've been to don't carry bread pudding, and Safeway (Randalls) does. Can you match that, H-E-B and Kroger?

Despite being right off the highway, access is quite rough. The location is near the CityCentre development, which was built on the site of Town & Country Mall. If you're not accessing it from Memorial Drive proper, have fun getting to it from the Sam Houston Tollway or Katy Freeway.

From the north, you'll have to exit more than a mile and a half up, go through two stoplights before turning left at a third, then going straight through a fourth (and before the Katy Freeway rebuild in the late 2000s, that would be "go through FOUR stoplights before turning left at a fifth").

From the south, you'll have to go through two stoplights after exiting before turning right at a third if you don't want to exit and then fight several lanes over (any time of the day) to turn right.

From the west, that's two miles on the highway frontage roads and five stoplights, and from the east, ALSO five stoplights. So much for highway access, right? With Memorial City Mall accessible from one exit from all four directions, it's no wonder why Memorial City Mall is successful and Town & Country Mall died off.

But since Town & Country Village actually was successful even when the mall was not (in fact it came back to life right around the time the mall was starting to die), that's all right, and since it did NOT die when Safeway began to destroy the chain, though doubtless it harmed its volume.

What can I say for T&C's Randalls now? It's a nice Randalls, but not a terribly distinct one. It has a sushi bar, it has a pharmacy (despite Walgreens next door), it has everything else you'd expect from a store that was under Safeway's control.

I've been trying to find information on Randalls Town & Country opening through the Houston Chronicle archives but I've come up short. I'm not even sure if I can say what they were doing at three Randalls stores were doing as of early 1996, making real homemade water-boiled bagels (the bagels nowadays are just shipped in frozen and baked), so I'm not exactly sure what the amenities what this store were like when it opened twenty years ago.

The Lewis & Coker to the east of the store was sold to Rice Epicurean, which operated it until 2013 when it was sold to The Fresh Market (which closed down within 3 years).

This Campbell's soup kiosk was here on my first trip in back sometime in late 2015, but it was gone on later visits. I'm tempted to say it was just a promotional thing. Note the in-house soup kiosk behind it.

The in-store tortilla chips, which all the area Randalls carry. Sometime in 2016, H-E-B introduced its own in-store tortilla chips, which is kind of cool that Randalls had something BEFORE them. When was the last time that happened!

I want to say that this is Beer & Wine sign is a holdover from the original décor though a little research shows that this might be Safeway's after all.

Inside the more dimly-lit "wine cellar" area. The camera messes up the light a bit, but it's not as "intimate" as I'd like or even offer a lot of high-end vintages.

Pretty sure that signage is an Albertsons carryover.

While The Fresh Market is no more, the Randalls has two major competitors in the area, the small Kroger of the Villages, which I hope to repair the page with new information soon, and also the massive H-E-B Bunker Hill, a 100,000+ square foot H-E-B with high volume and an in-store restaurant. Of course, being H-E-B, it misses a lot of the things and just feels like the same relatively bare-bones H-E-B in a nicer coat (I would like to cover that H-E-B at a later time). With some remodels rumored in the Randalls division, it would be nice to see the Randalls Flagship restored to its former position with some unique décor and different options (let's start with actually cooking dishes again). Randalls' long-time California counterpart, Pavilions, recently had a store with one-of-a-kind decor and new options, and it looks terrific. I would like to see Randalls to experiment further with larger and more stores, and generally restore itself from the damage caused by Safeway, but that's unlikely. Remember, if Albertsons didn't come along, then this would've closed by the end of 2014, certainly.