Market Street #556 - Plano, TX

Market Street in twilight

1929 Preston Road • Plano, TX
I'm still trying to get back into this whole Albertsons blogging thing (the two year anniversary of the merger is coming up and not much has happened, sadly) so we'll be switching gears. Maybe I should get into the habit of it being on not just AFB's off weeks but weeks where the recycling goes out the next day.

Our first United Supermarkets store on this blog (Albertsons Florida Blog has it so easy, all they do is cover old Albertsons, the Albertsons-turned-Safeway stores, and Save and Pack, while we cover Randalls/Tom Thumb, Safeway, Albertsons, AND United), this store is part of the United Division out of Lubbock and despite some streamlining, is still blissfully largely free from the mediocrity that plagues Albertsons and Safeway, it is not independent from it. On one hand, it frees up space that might've been slower-moving product but on the flipside loses competitive advantage and distinctiveness.

Sadly, no Market Street stores appear to have been built post-Safeway acquisition (at least the DFW area anyway), and they seem more focused on building the Tom Thumb name with a few urban stores ranging from "modest but not very large" to "very small" (former Fresh Market stores), though it does fit Tom Thumb's range anyway.

Always cool to see multiple logos in the cart collection.
This really is what Tom Thumb and Randalls are supposed to be like (well, Randalls was moving toward the whole "Wegmans of Texas" thing and I'm confident that in a better timeline, they'd be 100,000+ square feet now). Anyway, I was in town for the State Fair (never been before), and I actually originally wrote most of this (it's been edited to better fit the context for this website) as part of a longer document on what exactly I did there (that document was strictly for my own records and my friends--sorry, it will never be released on the Internet).

After the somewhat haphazard Dallas roads (like Houston's roads, they tend to have the "never seen a concerted effort in repaving the road in a few decades" appearance), I finally reached the Market Street supermarket. I was intrigued by it as it was owned by United Supermarkets, which was owned by Albertsons, which between its ownership of stores was hit or miss (to put it lightly), and Market Street was definitely a hit.

Do you like pumpkin spice flavored everything? If so, Market Street is the place for you!

It was clearly related to Albertsons and Randalls, but more like their better, more educated cousin. It was well staffed even for a Saturday evening (a common complaint for ALB/SWY stores is a lack of staffing). It didn't feel like a terribly large store, though it was really was one of the larger stores in the chain at 70,000 leasable square feet. I was happy to see that it was different enough from its contemporaries to make it worth visiting. I passed by two Tom Thumbs to see it, which was refreshing as in at least that part of Dallas, Tom Thumb had a far better hold on Dallas than Randalls does in Houston.

What it was not was particularly well-visible. Originally, it was a Wal-Mart with a Chick-fil-a and later a Black Eyed Pea in front of the store, but in 2006 it closed, replaced by an "upscale" Wal-Mart Supercenter prototype. By 2007, it was demolished, and by 2008, Market Street and new stores in the parking lot were under construction. The smaller footprint of Market Street puts it farther back than the old Wal-Mart it replaced. I measured in Google Earth...from the outermost southbound lane of Preston Road to the front entrance of the store, it's almost a quarter mile, though part of this is due to right of way in case they want to build an overpass over West Park Boulevard.

Like most modern grocery stores, the perishables are clustered to one side of the store, and even though it was a Saturday evening, the sushi bar and the bakery both had samples, and the wine department too. I'm sorry I don't have any pictures of this part, because I wanted to see it in real life (plus not attract attention).

I grabbed a cart and perused the aisles. For one thing, it downplays the now-common Signature brand, which was a rebranded version of Safeway brand foods (which Albertsons officially rolled out with great fanfare earlier this year). The entire soda department didn't have a store brand in sight, and I was able to pass an entire aisle of soft drinks and others before I finally saw some Signature-branded cranberry grape juice. The other big difference that separated this store from the "mainstream" stores was that the HBA section was huge. It didn't have much in the way of general merchandise, but it had a large supply of hair colorings and even things like beard trimmers and hair dryers.

Between the "Healthy Living" and the big HBA section, this part of the store is huge. Most stores lump some dollar-store quality merchandise near their HBA section, but not Market Street!

Unfortunately, I had found out through RetailWatchers that they had recently gone through and excised a lot of the more upscale center-store items that skewed toward the Whole Foods style product mix, but it still felt good like a grocery store was supposed to be, much like a nicer H-E-B sans the warehouse atmosphere and general chaos.

A fire escape plan/floor plan in plain view.

The store also featured the Market Street "Dish" department which was supposed to stock gifts and dinnerware but instead had a strange assortment of Christmas stuff, all of which gave off a weird smell (like how Hobby Lobby smells).

Keep in mind that when I took this picture, it wasn't even Halloween yet.
I ended up buying an expensive bottle of cucumber and mint infused water, something that I would normally never buy, but ended up doing so since I was both thirsty and wanted some vegetables (again, I had gone to the state fair, there was nothing I ate that wasn't mostly saturated fat and/or sugar).

Turns out other Safeway/Albertsons stores stock this too nowadays.

One more view showing the corner entrance
So that was Market Street...a refreshing look into one of Albertsons/Safeway's finest banners. The two year anniversary of their merger is coming up tomorrow, and what has happened is a disappointment so far (though not a disaster, by any means!)

Former Albertsons #2773 - Pearland, TX

7121 West Broadway Street • Pearland, TX
A large part of WHY I never ended up posting again was some computer-related issues and some burnout issues, but I'm back, and I'm trying to get stuff in my backlog sent out. The other very large part of why this blog did not become what I wanted it to become is my goal was to get a job in a different city than the one I grew up and went to school in, and that never happened, leading to a mish-mash of whatever I could get. I probably said something like this before, but yes, that is why this blog never worked the way I wanted. I really should post the other stores soon.

Like 2773, this store suffered from a bad location but at first glance, it was supposed to be in a very good location. Exciting things were happening in Pearland, Texas in the early 2000s as a wave of new development was building west of "Old Pearland" closer to 288. There was a Home Depot, a new Kroger, a huge new shopping center, and all manner of new homes. Albertsons must have thought it picked up a pretty sweet spot at Reid and Broadway to build a store and ride the wave of the future in an expanding suburb. After all a Kroger was to the west, and in addition to being the closest supermarket to Old Pearland, it should be better in the future, right? After all, Reid was going to expand north and maybe even connect with the Beltway (presumably to South Wayside Drive, which still is far from connecting to the rest of the 'hood). Wrong. Today, the center with Food Town seems to be in the middle of nowhere with an overdeveloped shopping center on a stub road to the north and to the south, a side road with some of the same rural homes on it that were there since the 1960s.

Pleasantly, the store still retains much of what other sites call "Blue & Green Awnings". It was one of the first store decor packages to use warehouse ceilings. The pharmacy is in the front part of the store, on the far left if you were looking at it from the front. You can see that there was once a much larger collection of health & beauty aids (at least I think that sign's from Albertsons, although the image got cut off), and that has been dramatically downscaled (unfortunately, this seems to have happened in "real" Albertsons stores as well). You can also see they kept the circular check-out stands, too.

Other than that, I got nothing. It was one of four Albertsons Houston stores sold to Grocers Supply Co., which leased them to Food Town. Once again, my camera kind of screws up lighting and contrast making the ceiling look really dark. Don't worry, I'll be upgrading my iPhone soon...

With that said, the question remains--will I get back to posting semi-regularly? Hopefully! Today happens to be the day that it's AFB's off week (which was my intention), and contrary to popular belief, I do have some partially finished posts that I am eager to show off. I'll try to get it at the Sunday two weeks from now.

Former Albertsons #2766 - Houston, TX

9125 West Sam Houston Parkway North • Houston, TX
Apologies for not getting this out on Sunday, but I'd like to share with you another former Houston Albertsons. One of the more popular posts on Albertsons Florida Blog (which is this blog's main inspiration) is their look at #4466, the Port St. Lucie Albertsons, which closed in 2012 despite a recently renewed lease and supposed profitability (it's possible that it did well right before the recession, where the PSL area was hit heavily with foreclosures). Well, PSL did have a twin store (more like a multiple birth), 2766. Unlike 4466, which was mauled for a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market, 2766 closed a decade prior and is now a Kroger, which kept the store intact.

Despite being updated with the same Kroger décor I've seen everywhere else (don't know the name), it still holds remarkably true to the 4466 layout. It has the same ceiling style and bore enough of a resemblance that I was able to look at the map with my phone and more or less follow it through. I could probably look at the pictures in AFB and visualize the "Theme Park" décor being in this store. The Starbucks was in the same place, the deli and meats were in the same place, and while the center store probably saw a rearrangement at some point, there were a few notable changes in the front. The old camera center had been converted to offices with the pet supply area converted to HBA, with the pharmacy next to it (it also added a walk-up pharmacy), and a bank space as well (this may have been part of the original layout), as well as a few other changes. The area around the florist was downsized (didn't see evidence of the former laundromat), as the customer service desk was moved either next to the restrooms or in front of the "Albertsons Reading Center" area. Assuming this store opened in 2000, it spent just about two years as an Albertsons before being sold to Kroger.

This part of town is very Kroger-concentrated due to their Albertsons purchases. Just two miles west on West Road is another Kroger (a Kroger Signature built around the turn of the millennium), and at that point, it's where you can find four Kroger stores within a three mile radius, two of which were former Albertsons (the other, of course, is 2790). This store replaced another Kroger store (at least functionally, I'm pretty sure there were a few years when both were open) 2 miles south (a former AppleTree) which had managed to co-exist with another Kroger store (closed around 2009) located a mile and a half southeast from that (also 290). Incredible!

I didn't get a lot of pictures of the store, unfortunately, but the former Albertsons Express is still in business as Kroger's "Kwik Shop", which is run by their convenience store division (a full Kroger-run and Kroger-branded convenience store was opened in College Station in 2016, and that made industry headlines).

Former Albertsons #2773 - Houston, TX

Once again, we're forced to use Bing. I tried to get a good picture of this store except a combination of dangerous traffic patterns and the whole thing being fenced in have forced me to do differently.

1770 East T.C. Jester Pkwy.• Houston, TX
While Acme Style and Albertsons Florida Blog are off for vacation, I have returned. Why did we go offline in the first place? Well, only a few know the real answer.

In any case, we're back and back with stuff I had been working on prior to the hiatus. As part of a site "renovation", a few posts were culled until I can revive them somehow (a few other posts still remain to be reworked), and once again, we're working off of the dead Houston division, though rest assured—a new post on a San Antonio division store (South Texas) is coming soon, as well as another Bonus Store coming soon. The Houston division was one of the very first markets Albertsons pulled out of post-ASC and for good reason. There were, of course, a number of problems.

• Competition, for starters. From the time Albertsons entered to when they left, the Houston market was highly fragmented. In addition to Whole Foods (which had a few locations), supercenters (Wal-Mart Supercenter, Auchan, Super Kmart, although the latter two disappeared shortly after the departure of Albertsons), and independents hanging around (even AppleTree, the Safeway Houston division spin-off, still hung around with a few stores until 1997), there were the big guys. Randalls, of course, was #1 until 1999, and by 2002 they were losing a lot of ground under Safeway but still very much a threat. Kroger was building new "Signature" stores and unseated Randalls for #1, and they would keep that seat solidly (thanks to the acquisition of many Albertsons stores) until around 2013 when H-E-B caught up (today they bounce between #1 and #2), Rice Epicurean (a long-standing traditional Houston grocer that reinvented itself as a more upmarket store, though today it's down to a single location), and of course, the ever-growing threat of H-E-B, which by the time Albertsons left was beginning to upgrade its small "H-E-B Pantry" fleet into full-line full-featured stores.
• The expansion was part of a major store-build push in the 1990s that included the Southern United States as their main target. Albertsons was reaching a point where they almost (or perhaps did) have stores stretching across the I-10 corridor from California to Florida. To cap off their expansion, they bought American Stores, though that came at a heavy cost, namely rebranding Lucky to Albertsons (the Lucky stores would compose a third of the Albertsons store base in early 2000), which didn't go over so well.
• An inherently flawed plan that involved forcing their way into a crowded market where they would spend enormous resources for a market share.
• The weak economy (September 11th, Enron scandal, soft 2001 economy in general), though Albertsons denied this when they pulled out.

Above all, another major problem was building full-size stores in unproven locations. H-E-B Pantry did that to some extent but it was okay since their stores had little to no service departments and could shutter stores at little cost to the company. The closest analogue to H-E-B Pantry stores today would be Aldi, which had not entered the market at the time, and even that's not a great comparison, since Aldi doesn't sell a lot of name brands nor has a "real" supermarket elsewhere.

Make no bones about it, the Westheimer and Voss location as previously covered really was a good location...high traffic count, high population, and great access but failed due to the whole market situation and never became another supermarket again because everyone else had their own stores.

The East T.C. Jester store, not so much. This specimen and a few other stores in the area are especially perplexing, as things like this just seemed to suggest a "just throw them anywhere" attitude involving the Houston division, and that's not just speculative thinking...I've been told by someone who worked as a merchandiser for Frito-Lay that traffic count was not one of the things Albertsons looked at (some managers also had this particularly bizarre-like obsession with paperwork at the exact same time and signed by the right people, hearing him describe it brought to mind the film Brazil). This isn't a good thing if you're building large stores with full-service bakery, seafood, and deli departments.

The most immediate problem of this store (which originally had a larger parking lot, removed for a water retention pond) is that its access is very limited. Today, it only has one customer entrance in and out, but while the original design did include a few more entrances, it still had substantial access problems. There were a few other access portals on the side streets for trucks, but the surrounding roads are narrow and those don't do any favors for loading docks. I once spent several minutes stopped at one of the nearby roads for a truck to wriggle itself into a company that delivered flowers to florists.

I've spent a bit of time around this intersection and trying to navigate the area, and even getting into the former Albertsons driveway from the north was a pretty difficult experience. The building is certainly visible, but when you're trying to navigate the four way stops and then trying to make another left turn, it's easy to miss.

Compounding this access difficulty is the absence of traffic counts. I've been told that the road was extended circa 1999 as part of the deal of Albertsons coming. So you've got a dubious location to begin with, which is never good. The other things that tend to screw over individual locations are competition and demographics.

First, let's look at the immediate competition when this store was still alive.

Like the Bryan Albertsons, being the big dog in terms of being nice and big doesn't guarantee you success. Neither Foodarama (formerly an AppleTree/Safeway) or H-E-B (former Pantry, which we had covered here) are big stores but both draw a reasonable crowd for what they had. Generally, they were less expensive than Albertsons at this point, as well. To the southeast was (and is) a large Kroger, benefiting from the heavy crowds of Shepherd Drive, a four-lane, one-way road (the southbound traffic, Durham, goes behind Kroger). To the east was another Kroger, nestled in the Greater Heights area.

You'll also notice a large building with a dark roof at the northeast corner of the picture. This was a Kmart that opened in the 1970s and probably did okay (at least initially) because it was a Kmart. It closed in 2002 because it wasn't making a profit, and I believe it...I passed it by in 2011 for the first time and was astounded that a Kmart even existed in such a desolate location. Like the Albertsons, it didn't reopen as major retail, ending up becoming a dance studio and a wholesale store for the restaurant industry.

Both the H-E-B and Foodarama had better access and although they tend to draw a rather scruffy crowd (even in 2015), they at least seem moderately popular and have far better access. The Foodarama had been originally built as a Safeway and had been a Foodarama since 1994 when it took over the AppleTree that was there. The H-E-B had been built a few years prior but it replaced a legacy of grocery stores that dated back to the 1980s.

Furthermore, while it was true that the main Heights area was starting to gentrify at this time, the Heights had previously been a really bad area in the 1980s and building a giant supermarket in a neighborhood just starting to get on its feet isn't the best plan. The smarter move would've been to buy the land then build once demographics are favorable, but that wouldn't have worked if traffic counts are unknown and the city wants you to build. Even if the traffic counts weren't an issue, it was separated from the stores and neighborhoods west of the bayou and too far from the stores and neighborhoods east of it. In other words, this store was in the middle of nowhere.

Reality is this store wasn't open for much longer than two years. It quietly closed in February 2002 along with the Tidwell/Antoine store (another terrible, terrible location) and was never picked up by another supermarket. H-E-B could've picked it up like they did a few other Albertsons stores to upgrade Pantry locations, but they didn't.

Not all of the Houston stores were bad, far from it. There were some very nice locations that probably fetched the struggling Albertsons chain some cash as they were sold to other operators like Kroger or H-E-B. But combined with the problems that Albertsons was facing with some bad locations like this one doomed the entire division, one they wouldn't return to until 2015 when they bought Safeway, bringing the Randalls stores back, which is longer than the gap between Safeway spinning off their old Houston division and purchasing Randalls...and Randalls has problems of its own.

After it closed, a large part of the parking lot was removed for a retention pond (likely to prevent flooding) and it became a self storage facility called Heights Self Storage. In spring 2016, this changed to LifeStorage.

Albertsons #2775 / #775 - Lafayette, LA

2863 Ambassador Caffery Parkway • Lafayette, LA
For the first time in this blog's history, we have a living Albertsons that's not being closed down. Unfortunately, it's not in Texas, but that's okay, since this Albertsons was part of the original Houston division, and, thanks to the Safeway acquisition, has returned to that status.

So, where is this one? Lafayette, Louisiana, a city I visited on October 30th, 2015, by coincidence, exactly a year since I saw an Albertsons in person last, though last time I didn't go in because I was on a school-related trip. Sadly, this store trip had to be truncated slightly because I was also on someone else's clock (and a low phone battery), so I didn't get to explore it and see all the perishables department. Heck, I don't even remember seeing the seafood, meats, or bakery departments all that well, because I mostly breezed over them (or they could've been small, who knows).

If you can make it out, note the "Albertsons Market" aisle markers. The "Albertsons Market" name was in the ads and even on the wall, but never outside. Since purchasing back New Albertsons and re-assigning the Albertsons Market name to United-operated Albertsons stores, the use of this name has decreased considerably.

The décor was updated to the current décor standards engineered under Cerberus ownership, called "Quality Built" by Acme Style Blog because of the fact that the décor (in the ACME division) pays homage to the historic brand, which previous décor packages have not. In reality, this décor packages achieves the goal of being modern yet colorful, something the Lifestyle stores never did (it was kind of trend-setting for 2005, admittedly, but definitely not a long term décor choice, especially at the pace they remodeled at).

I'm guessing that due to the relatively late build date (sometime between 1999 and 2003) and the high ceilings, that this décor started out as "Theme Park" (also, another Acme Style name) and was redone when a remodeling binge was done on the Louisiana stores. It also had a similar floorplan to the Port St. Lucie store, except flipped left-to-right, so you walked in on the RIGHT side of the store, the deli was right there, and then the produce going toward the back of the store, and so on. However, the arrangement of other things (the stores in the front, like the "sports shop") was different, and it didn't have a large area in the middle of the store for a pharmacy and dry cleaning (which may have been original features later taken out).

This is the first thing that I noticed that confirmed that yes, Safeway brands are here!

The store didn't seem particularly huge, but it felt very open. The produce section had plenty of room to go around, but I wasn't sure if it just felt spacious because of the open space (and lack of crowds) or lack of merchandise. Other notes included the fact that there's signage with the Albertsons logo inside an outline of Louisiana advertising Louisiana made products.

I blurred out the milk price here because Louisiana milk is expensive due to local state laws (even Walmart's is shockingly high), but the focus is on Good Day milk. It's distributed by SuperValu and on its way out in favor of the Pantry Essentials brand, but it used to be the cheaper milk brand for Albertsons (and on the big gallon tubs of ice cream), with the logo largely as I had remembered it which, based on the last time I really remember going into a non-closing Albertsons, was about a decade ago.

Louisiana has one of the loosest liquor laws in the country, so the liquor store (detached in many Albertsons) essentially acts as its own department, not a separate store. Shoppers went in and out freely (I had to wait a few seconds before taking the picture), and I could've (if I wanted to) had the relatively rare pleasure of getting a bottle of Jack Daniels and toilet paper on the same shopping trip.

Another thing that I sadly didn't get a picture of was the hot foods and salad bars. Both were basically stuck in the middle of the deli area (titled Fresh Deli instead of ACME's Corner Deli, even though it was in the corner), which also had a self-serve soda fountain and a small area with containers of Community Coffee (the soda had prices, I considered the coffee, but didn't see the price...or cups). The salad bar looked okay at first glance, though I tend to stay away from that sort of thing, and the wings bar looked okay (but I'm used to it being behind the counter), but included boudin balls (basically boudin blanc sausage, but instead battered and deep fried instead of being in a casing). There was also fried chicken.

There was a garden department at one time, but I didn't investigate it too closely because it was closed and if it had an entrance, it would've been through the liquor department. There was a labelscar on the old garden department but I couldn't make it out. Either the liquor store was added later in a former indoor garden center department (unlikely), the garden center was accessed through the liquor store, or the garden center was never intended to be accessed from the inside. [2016 UPDATE: The liquor store was originally a Lawn & Garden center, and there was a door between the inside portion (liquor store) and outside (abandoned garden area).]

Although I didn't get a full view of the store, I did get the ad for that store. As the photos near the milk show, I came right at the time when Essential Everyday is being pushed out, and Safeway brands rolling in. This means that the store is getting a totally different distributor, going from the SuperValu warehouse in Indianola, Mississippi, to the Randalls warehouse in Houston, Texas. This also means that the distance is substantially closer (by about two hours).

In-store made tortilla chips? Wow! I don't think I saw this store have a tortilleria, though (but again, I barely checked out the perishables departments) and I don't think even H-E-B makes their own tortilla chips in-house.

This was confusing. I had read earlier that it was the Albertsons fried chicken recipe being rolled out to Safeway in the West Coast, but now it's the Signature brand. I guess that unless they flip-flopped on the name, Signature is being used on the old Albertsons brand. [2016 UPDATE: I can confirm it is indeed the Albertsons recipe.]

Check it out, guys, a real Albertsons brand!

I guess this store does okay (and by extension, Louisiana stores) because there's not a lot of competition. Down the road I saw a Winn-Dixie Marketplace with original 1980s signage intact (unknown on the inside, since again, I didn't have time) and a billboard for Super 1 Foods, a warehouse style store owned by Brookshire's. And speaking of competition, there's a reminder of a certain ACME competitor...

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...

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.

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.