pseudo3d wrote:storewanderer wrote:
With the Forest Lane store closing conveniently after rumblings were made about Kroger moving in, maybe Kroger has bought them and they're keeping it semi-secret.
Did you mean that Kroger has bought the Forest Lane Fiesta or did you mean that perhaps Kroger has bought the entire Fiesta chain? If that were to happen, it would be interesting - but my thought is the anti-trust people would probably freak out given the number of stores both chains have in the Houston area.
I have a lot of fondness and nostalgia for Fiesta and hope they do well. In the 1990s one of the highlights of occasional trips I would take to visit friends in Houston was stopping at one of the larger Fiesta stores and exploring their international and specialty offerings - it was an adventure trying out unusual drinks and food from around the world. At the time such items were not as easily found in the Fort Worth/Dallas area. There was no Central Market and the only Whole Foods was in Dallas about 40 miles from where I am in Fort Worth. This was pre-Walmart Supercenter so mainstream chains had not started adding specialty foods as a way of differentiating themselves. The ethnic markets in the area were mostly in the Dallas suburbs and tended to be tiny mom and pop markets that were sometimes dirty with aged stock. And the other thing that impressed me about my visits to the Houston Fiestas was the cheap produce - much less expensive than what was available at the mainstream groceries here.
When Fiesta finally opened stores in the area I was disappointed that they were small ones without the extensive international sections - but for years they were my go-to place for cheap produce.
Today my go-to place for cheap produce is Sprouts - the quality is consistently better and the prices are similar and sometimes less. Lots of people sell specialty foods these days - and I live near a Central Market. If I want to explore unusual Asian groceries I can make a trip to Carrollton and go to the large Super H Mart which is very clean and has an Asian food court, very extensive produce and seafood sections, kimchi bar, etc. For Indian there are multiple Patel Brothers locations with a large selection and low prices. And there are numerous other large ethnic supermarkets in the region I have yet to visit.
Larger Fiestas have since opened up here and I still make special trips for certain things such as a Jamaican pepper sauce I am fond of as well as Riga sprats. And there are some Latin American items that the only place I know of to find them is Fiesta. But a visit to Fiesta is no longer the adventure it was for me during the 1990s - the quality and variety of grocery options that have become available in the area over the past couple of decades is remarkable. In some respects those 1990s Fiestas were ahead of their time.
And Fiestas are still interesting to visit because they tend to occupy stores abandoned by other companies. Of the two that are closest to me, one is a former Winn-Dixie Marketplace and the other is a former Safeway/Minyard/Sack'n Save.
The last I was aware of, the guy who runs Fiesta is the same person who ran Minyard for awhile. That probably should not be held against him as Minyard was already in decline by the time he came on - and he was the one who presided over the sale of a few dozen Minyard/Carnival locations to Fiesta's then parent company in 2008. It will be interesting to see what direction he takes the company