Randalls Distribution Center

10700 Telge Road

Houston-based Randalls opened a warehouse along Northwest Freeway in 1983, and expanded it in the late 1990s, adding a large traditional warehouse to the south and a freezer addition to the north (the old building had just perishables), consolidating from a location at 3350 Rogerdale Road. This came at about the same time as the chain was purchased by California-based Safeway Inc., which continued to operate the Randalls distribution center as one of two Texas facilities (the other is in the Dallas area, purchased from Food Lion) to serve primarily the Austin and Houston areas.

When Safeway bought Randalls, it was #2 in market share behind Kroger at 20.2%, almost bigger than #3 and #4 held together (Fiesta Mart and H-E-B, respectively).¹ In the years that followed, Safeway made a series of decisions that alienated customers and did not expand the chain, especially as Kroger, H-E-B, and Walmart made aggressive growth. By 2016, about a year after Safeway was acquired by Albertsons, Randalls had fallen to less than 4%, not that Albertsons had much to work with before.

After purchasing Safeway, Albertsons initially reorganized the divisional structure to divide up the "Texas" division, taking Randalls' Tom Thumb chain and combining it with the Dallas-area Albertsons (in the "South" division) while combining Albertsons South's southern Louisiana stores and Florida stores with the Houston division. The Florida stores disconnected as part of a rebranding to Safeway and a realignment with Eastern (until they finally exited the market for good) and in spring 2017, Albertsons gave up on the Houston Division as a separate division (again) and combined it with the South Division, and sold the building.

As of this writing, part of the 1983 building will be demolished (to make the southern 1999 addition a separate building), and three new buildings are to be added under the name "Highland Grove Business Park".

Crossposted from Carbon-izer Presents the Northwest Freeway Corridor.
¹ - `Right' store was ripe for picking - Randalls joins trend with dealHouston Chronicle (TX) (Published as Houston Chronicle) - July 24, 1999
Pictures taken September 2018

1102 Yale

1102 Yale
Because of a plan this site had not to cover the same territory as other sites, it will only add/update to what Arch-ive has already covered.

The most important thing to note is that Arch-ive.org implies it was Ivy-Russell Ford, THEN ABC Food Stores, which it was not.

In 1941, the 1930s-era grocery store here, ABC Food Stores, was absorbed and rebranded by rival Henke & Pillot. In 1955, Henke & Pillot closed and was replaced by Ivy-Russell Ford (which would only make sense seeing as how it was Ivy-Russell, not ABC/Henke's, brand when the siding was peeled off).

In the early 1960s, Ivy-Russell Ford departed and was replaced with Big Bonus Stamp Company (a redemption center for a type of trading stamp) before folding around 1977. For a brief time after that it was the home of F.A. Bogar Furniture (1977-1982) before becoming Eckerd in 1983.

Eckerd remained here until as late as 2004 when the stores were purchased by CVS (CVS did not convert this store).

In 2008, renovations began on the building with the facade (added by Eckerd, or maybe a previous tenant) peeled off. Lola opened in 2009. Additional tenants that arrived by 2011 included Anytime Fitness, Flooring in the Heights, and Nutrition Epicenter. Nutrition Epicenter has closed (Flooring in the Heights has only one mention beyond Street View, and it is also gone). Sharkey's Cuts for Kids has taken over the nutrition store, and it appears Anytime Fitness has expanded into the flooring store. While this site aims to cover full histories of the sites it covers, sometimes that is not feasible with the schedule. Photo taken by author, August 1, 2018.