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
