Arlan's Market, Big Chief, And Safeway Grocery Stores

[IronTiger]

One of the smaller grocery stores in the Houston groceryverse, Arlan's Market, has certainly gained some traction in the Houston market, buying up Harlan's and stuff, but where did it come from?

 

- The corporation is based in Seabrook, Texas and has a store nearby on NASA Road 1, but it's considered Store #2 (more on that later)

- According to this link,

- Arlan's Market #5 is in Galveston, but they had an older store that was open as of 2007. The current #5 at 513 Market Street was a Gerland's Food Fair  [       Mariner's Guide]

- The archived website as far back as 2001 mentions the original Seabrook store and "two on Galveston Island". link. According to Archive.org, this was the case going into 2007.

- There was a store on 25th Street at Bernando de Galvez, which was open in 2007 but closed a few years later. Despite being unable to find the address, the store appears to have opened in 1998 in a former Fiesta. It appears to be a very old building that originally had a peaked roof. It mentions the current location at Market opened in 1997, which is still open, as well as another former Gerland's (which is now closed). It also mentions a Dickinson location.

- The same article mentions that the first store was in the Clear Lake area, which might've been the NASA Road store.

- The oldest store in Seabrook, Texas, was originally a Safeway, and later an AppleTree. According to articles, it was sold to Big Chief Foods in late 1993.

- However, a second Big Chief Foods was at 12460 Highway 6 in Santa Fe TX. This was also a Safeway (though it did not last until the end of AppleTree, it either closed in 1987 under Safeway or closed in the early 1990s under AppleTree. It did not become an Arlan's until 2011.

 

Question is this, where was Store Number #1, and what does Big Chief Foods have to do with it? Was it a spin-off from Big Chief in 1991? What was the first Big Chief?

[sevfiv]

Commenting to follow - I don't know the history of Big Chief other than it changed to Arlan's around 2012. They also rebuilt the McDonalds out front and removed the teepee that it had..

 

http://arch-ive.org/archive/big-chief-foods/

[IronTiger]

Updates to the mystery:

 

- The Big Chief in Santa Fe is a distinct Houston-division Safeway, but has been Big Chief since 1989.

- A 2007 article mentions Tabb Watt has owned Big Chief for more than 20 years (since at least 1987), meaning the Safeway that was there closed even earlier.

- Mariners Guide mentions Arlans at the Seabrook site, not Big Chief. Given that the information tends to be from the mid to late 1990s, this indicates the other Big Chief sold out soon after. http://web.archive.org/web/20111212033640/http://marinersguide.com/regions/gulfcoast/seabrook.tx/food.html

 

[SpaceGhost]

According to The Chronicle the original location was 18091 Upper Bay Rd, Houston, TX 77058.

 

Quote

"It's been really rough around here," said Ames Arlan, owner of Arlan's Market at 18091 Upper Bay Road. "We are certainly ready for a break. Business here declined 10 percent to 12 percent after the Fiesta opened. We are hoping we can regain some of that."

 

Take from the article "Party's over for NASA Fiesta - Huge, landmark store closing at the end of the year" Published NOVEMBER 4, 1993. The property was listed as for sale on November 22, 1998 in a Chronicle Real Estate Briefing.

[IronTiger]

19 hours ago, SpaceGhost said:

According to The Chronicle the original location was 18091 Upper Bay Rd, Houston, TX 77058.

 

 

Take from the article "Party's over for NASA Fiesta - Huge, landmark store closing at the end of the year" Published NOVEMBER 4, 1993. The property was listed as for sale on November 22, 1998 in a Chronicle Real Estate Briefing.

Nice work! It looks like the entire plaza is 18091 Upper Bay Road, so Arlan's was probably the center tenant. Another article in reference to a charter school wanting to move in means the space was vacant as of 2001. The current store is only two miles away, that is, the former Big Chief, looks like it was originally built in the mid-1970s.

 

If the Seabrook store is Arlan's 2, that implies that they didn't close the old store for a long time, and a lot of lingering Internet references still point to Arlan's at 18091 Upper Bay Road. HCAD searches for Arlan's 2 in Seabrook have proved fruitless, but if it was the second one then it probably sold out soon after.

 

I'm guessing Arlan's opened in 1991 in a space that another supermarket operated. This is important because Arlan's was founded in 1991 but the Fiesta opened in 1988. It wouldn't make sense for Arlan's to open AFTER Fiesta...Arlan was probably a manager of the old store before Fiesta opened, and then bought and renamed the store in 1991.

 

Then at some point in the 1990s, Arlan's started buying stores. The second store was likely purchased in the mid-1990s, and by the time they were buying up stores in Galveston Island in the late 1990s (the former Fiesta mentioned was at 2415 Avenue P, the old name of Bernando de Galvez, though I don't have a store number for that), Arlan's had already closed up shop at 18091 Upper Bay Road. This is why there are records of Arlan's at Upper Bay Road but nothing for the former Big Chief in Seabrook.

 

But, what if there's another possibility? We know that Big Chief purchased the store in late 1993, we don't know if they actually opened as such. All I can get is that Big Chief and other owners took over in early 1994 and AppleTree owners "expected" them to reopen in a few days. Suppose that it was really Arlan's that wanted it, but couldn't bid on the store for whatever reason? Big Chief buys it, and sells it to Arlan's...it's possible that the two grocery owners were friends (or maybe the BC owner had stock in Arlan's), which in turn allowed BC to sell to Arlan's when the BC owner retired.

 

The only way to know for sure is if someone contacted the former owner of Big Chief or the current Arlan's owner, but I don't know about that.

[Gurgis]

It's hard sifting through all of the data here, but 18091 Upper Bay Road is in the city of Nassau Bay (not Seabrook, Houston, or anywhere else). According to Google, that address currently houses Viola & Agnes' Neo Soul Cafe. I used to live near there, and it is a fairly old strip center, basically across from Johnson Space Center. I'm guessing it was built in the 60s or 70s.

 

I've been to the Arlan's Market at 4614 NASA Road 1 (currently NASA Parkway), at Kirby, which is in Taylor Lake Village, but has a Seabrook address (due to no post office in Taylor Lake Village).

 

Here is a link to an article that mentions the Nassau Bay and NASA Road 1 / Kirby locations:

http://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/Arlan-s-family-business-spreading-across-Texas-9461340.php

 

[IronTiger]

8 hours ago, Gurgis said:

It's hard sifting through all of the data here, but 18091 Upper Bay Road is in the city of Nassau Bay (not Seabrook, Houston, or anywhere else). According to Google, that address currently houses Viola & Agnes' Neo Soul Cafe. I used to live near there, and it is a fairly old strip center, basically across from Johnson Space Center. I'm guessing it was built in the 60s or 70s.

 

I've been to the Arlan's Market at 4614 NASA Road 1 (currently NASA Parkway), at Kirby, which is in Taylor Lake Village, but has a Seabrook address (due to no post office in Taylor Lake Village).

 

Here is a link to an article that mentions the Nassau Bay and NASA Road 1 / Kirby locations:

http://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/Arlan-s-family-business-spreading-across-Texas-9461340.php

 

 

Investigative work revealed that 18091 Upper Bay Road is the address for the whole strip and not any one tenant. So, technically you're still correct.

[gnu]

If memory serves, the original grocer at 18091 Upper Bay Road location (Nassau Bay Village)  was  Weingarten's.  Cool center back in the day.  Even had professional offices on a second story.  It had sort of Westbury Square-ish feel.

[Gurgis]

4 hours ago, gnu said:

If memory serves, the original grocer at 18091 Upper Bay Road location (Nassau Bay Village)  was  Weingarten's.  Cool center back in the day.  Even had professional offices on a second story.  It had sort of Westbury Square-ish feel.

 

Interesting. It'd be great to see a picture of the shopping area in its heydey. I only know it's 1997-2012 appearance. I didn't realize that there was ever a second floor. How was it like Westbury Square? I'm sure there were NASA connections too, with the space program going strong during the earlier years.

 

I'm curious your bottom quote is from the Sweet song "Blockbuster". Perhaps not.

[gnu]

Wow!  Nice call on my quote!  Yep.  It's from Blockbuster.  For some reason I have always liked that song.

I may have over played my hand.  Maybe not TOO much like Westbury Square, just a feel with the "old English" style, the clock tower, the second floor offices, and the little plaza areas in front of part of it.  The second floor is still there, you can see the windows on the back side and they may still lease out some of the space, not sure.

[jt124]

[jt124]

This Big Chief Foods was located on Hwy 6  in Santa Fe.  

I remember shopping there a couple of times when it was a Big Chief Foods.  This was back in the mid 90's.  It is now an Arlans.

12460 Highway 6 Santa Fe, TX 77510

 

[plumber2]

IronTiger, The Big Chief in Santa Fe was never operated as a Safeway, and there was never another grocery store in Santa Fe other than the current H-E-B. The Arlan's opened as Big Chief (a franchised name I presume), and was independently owned by Tab Watt. I say a "franchised name" because I saw a Big Chief somewhere in Channelview back in the late 90's or early 00's. Tab only sold to Arlan's because he and his wife were ready to retire and he wanted to make sure the purchaser was a good fit for his employees (who wore dress shirts and ties, and also sacked and took your groceries to your vehicle). He also wanted the new owners to be a good fit for the community. Arlan's has been welcomed and patronized by the community, as the only other grocery store in town is the aging H-E-B. The H-E-B was previously a Pantry, Harvest Foods, Holiday Foods, and a Minimax. The owner of the this store(s) (Joe Tombrella) still lives in town, as I saw him at the donut shop the other day. He sold to H-E B not long after Big Chief opened.

 

As a side note: The Arlan's that was on 25th Street at Ave P in Galveston was originally a Weingarten's. Arlan's did not reopen this store after hurricane Ike visited in 2008.

The only remaining Arlan's in Galveston now is the Market at 6th St. location.

[IronTiger]

10 hours ago, plumber2 said:

IronTiger, The Big Chief in Santa Fe was never operated as a Safeway, and there was never another grocery store in Santa Fe other than the current H-E-B. The Arlan's opened as Big Chief (a franchised name I presume), and was independently owned by Tab Watt. I say a "franchised name" because I saw a Big Chief somewhere in Channelview back in the late 90's or early 00's. Tab only sold to Arlan's because he and his wife were ready to retire and he wanted to make sure the purchaser was a good fit for his employees (who wore dress shirts and ties, and also sacked and took your groceries to your vehicle). He also wanted the new owners to be a good fit for the community. Arlan's has been welcomed and patronized by the community, as the only other grocery store in town is the aging H-E-B. The H-E-B was previously a Pantry, Harvest Foods, Holiday Foods, and a Minimax. The owner of the this store(s) (Joe Tombrella) still lives in town, as I saw him at the donut shop the other day. He sold to H-E B not long after Big Chief opened.

 

As a side note: The Arlan's that was on 25th Street at Ave P in Galveston was originally a Weingarten's. Arlan's did not reopen this store after hurricane Ike visited in 2008.

The only remaining Arlan's in Galveston now is the Market at 6th St. location.

 

The Santa Fe Big Chief has the exact same architectural features of many of the known former Safeway stores in the Houston area (Jumping World/former Academy off I-45, the indoor go-kart track/former Kroger at US-290 and Beltway 8). It was built in the mid-1970s, before Tab Watt owned it (otherwise the 2007 article would say 30 years, and besides, why would an independent store look exactly like a chain store?) though it's possible that it sat vacant for several years before it was reopened.

 

If Big Chief was indeed franchised (and that looks correct, I found a Newspapers.com reference to a Big Chief in Baytown in 1969), then the possibility that Arlan's at Upper Bay Road was indeed Big Chief prior to 1991 BUT owned by Arlan, which would explain the whole discrepancy of Arlan's founding and Fiesta's opening. But if the chain was going by Arlan's in the early 1990s, then what were they doing (if they in fact did) with Big Chief buying the Seabrook AppleTree? That's the big question...

 

 

[gnu]

I don't know anything about the Big Chief chain but

1011 N. Main in Highlands was a Big Chief from the 60s until at least the mid-80s if not longer.

I do have a vague recollection of them opening another location in maybe in Crosby or Baytown.

 

It looks a little different now, but this is the building

Google Street View linky

[iliketurtles]

On 12/9/2016 at 9:49 PM, SpaceGhost said:

According to The Chronicle the original location was 18091 Upper Bay Rd, Houston, TX 77058.

 

 

Take from the article "Party's over for NASA Fiesta - Huge, landmark store closing at the end of the year" Published NOVEMBER 4, 1993. The property was listed as for sale on November 22, 1998 in a Chronicle Real Estate Briefing.

There used to be a Fiesta by NASA?

[gnu]

The "Hydroponic" Fiesta.  Named such because some of the produce was growing in water.

It was at NASA Rd 1 and I-45.  Where Burlington Coat Factory is now.

[IronTiger]

On 4/21/2017 at 4:05 PM, iliketurtles said:

There used to be a Fiesta by NASA?

Yeah, in 1989 (or 1988?), Fiesta opened a large moderately upscale store with a flagship feature of growing vegetables inside the store in a special chamber (with huge lights, a lot of special care to grow them, etc.) and made a lot of press when it first opened both locally and in the industry. The hydroponics were horrifically expensive to maintain, and they would've had to run opening-day numbers weekly to keep it profitable. It wasn't--they had to downscale the store by 1991 and it closed in 1993.

 

At least that's how the papers reported it. I wasn't really there.