NEW: Austin TX, 1924-1986

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Groceteria
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NEW: Austin TX, 1924-1986

Post by Groceteria »

This one was by popular vote on Twitter:

https://www.groceteria.com/place/texas/austin/

I hope to fill in the gaps between 1986 and the present soon.
pseudo3d
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Re: NEW: Austin TX, 1924-1986

Post by pseudo3d »

I believe that I mentioned this in another thread, but the biggest changes that happened between 1986 and the present are these:
- Tom Thumb sells about half of their stores to Albertsons (the better half, including a store under construction)
- Skaggs Alpha Beta becomes Jewel-Osco in 1991, which becomes Albertsons in 1992.
- Safeway becomes AppleTree in a 1989 spin-off.
- AppleTree sells its stores in early 1994. In Austin, these stores are all picked up by Randalls, which renovate and reopen them. Tom Thumb, which Randalls had acquired the parent company of (Cullum Cos.) a few years earlier, is re-bannered as Randalls.
- Albertsons exits the area in 2007 by selling off their stores (the ones that didn't close in 2006) to H-E-B. A few of these stores are reopened as H-E-B, some that are close to existing H-E-B stores don't.
- Albertsons re-enters Austin by buying Randalls, which by this time is a mix of small Safeway/AppleTree stores, some old, small Rylander stores (going as low as 15k square feet), and some 1990s/Safeway builds

Current situation is H-E-B dominates by a huge amount, both in store count, popularity, and size of the stores.
pseudo3d
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Re: NEW: Austin TX, 1924-1986

Post by pseudo3d »

There are a few things relating Tom Thumb, Randalls, and Albertsons that I missed.

- I read about the "store under construction" but now I no longer believe that to be true based on information. (Either way it's an H-E-B now.)
- There weren't Jewel-Osco stores in Austin. Albertsons bought three Skaggs-Alpha Beta stores in late 1989 and closed them and reopened them. One of the Albertsons stores that they had purchased from Tom Thumb earlier that year closed (a 30k square feet store). This ended up preserving the original numbering for that store (see the other thread). Albertsons closed the stores for about a week for resetting, whereas when they purchased the southern Jewel-Osco stores a few years later these were just overnight (with the Jewel-Osco name staying on for a few more weeks).
- There was one store that Tom Thumb closed in its sale to Albertsons, but somehow they kept the lease. A few years later Randalls renovated and reopened it, only for that store to be sold back to Albertsons in 1997 along with two other stores, and then closed for good in 2006.
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