Food Town-Houston

[storewanderer]

What is the private label situation with this chain?

Old photos online show Best Yet products and some Parade products...

At the present time they have stores that have Always Save/Best Choice items from AWG, but those items are presently on clearance at 50% off. They are then being replaced with (often higher priced) Best Yet items.

Then they have other stores that appear to have been selling Best Yet items this whole time.

Somewhat confusing.

Really interesting little chain. Enjoyed the former Albertsons, Food Lion, Winn Dixie, and Safeway units. The Auchan unit was sad, forgotten, and creepy. Especially the second floor. Not to mention that walking their stores with no perimeter departments and handwritten signs all over is a flashback straight to the 80's. A couple stores had self checkout which seemed really out of place.

Actually to say no perimeter is a bit misleading- they have various "tenants" in some stores (and no tenants in some stores). Tenants include pharmacies, bakeries, hot food counters, cell phone shops, watch repair shops, insurance sales, and more.

[retailfanmitchell019]

What is the private label situation with this chain?

Old photos online show Best Yet products and some Parade products...

At the present time they have stores that have Always Save/Best Choice items from AWG, but those items are presently on clearance at 50% off. They are then being replaced with (often higher priced) Best Yet items.

Then they have other stores that appear to have been selling Best Yet items this whole time.

Somewhat confusing.

Really interesting little chain. Enjoyed the former Albertsons, Food Lion, Winn Dixie, and Safeway units. The Auchan unit was sad, forgotten, and creepy. Especially the second floor. Not to mention that walking their stores with no perimeter departments and handwritten signs all over is a flashback straight to the 80's. A couple stores had self checkout which seemed really out of place.

Actually to say no perimeter is a bit misleading- they have various "tenants" in some stores (and no tenants in some stores). Tenants include pharmacies, bakeries, hot food counters, cell phone shops, watch repair shops, insurance sales, and more.

I know Menards uses the Parade brand in its grocery section… Parade is from Federated Foods (was owned by the Flickinger family at one time), which is a private label supplier/broker similar to Topco. Federated also owns the Hy-Top brand (which WinCo sold long ago).

The private label situation reminds me of L&B… Schnucks is also like that too, as they use UNFI for non-food in some areas.

[storewanderer]

There is a small distributor in CA who distributes some SKUs of Parade to various small hispanic and other small ethnic stores. Someone is still distributing Parade in TX as I saw various Parade items in an Asian grocery store I went into but maybe those had been there a while.

Schnucks uses UNFI for Rockford and a few other stores; UNFI got them to agree for that when they sold some Shop N Saves to them in St. Louis (what does one thing have to do with the other? ask UNFI- who was clearly fishing to replace some lost volume).

It appears Grocers Supply in Houston is owned by C&S. I thought Food Town was owned by Grocers Supply but that does not actually appear to be the case, it appears that split would have occurred in 2014.

I noticed the same private label transition from AWG Brands to Best Yet occurring at a store in Houston called Foodarama which seems to follow a similar playbook to Food Town but with noticeably higher prices and doesn't appear to be nearly as successful.

[pseudo3d]

Transmitting from another source to post here:

Greetings, this is another message from Anonymous in Houston, guest blogger from Houston Historic Retail. Food Town, like most of Houston’s independent grocers, used Grocers Supply Co. until GSC was taken over by C&S. During the Grocers Supply era, the Parade brand was the unofficial store brand of Houston as it was available at just about every independent supermarket like Food Town, Gerland’s Food Fair, and even Fiesta Mart.

Food Town still uses C&S so the Parade brand was replaced with Best Yet. I’m not sure why you saw AWG products at Food Town, but it must have been some kind of temporary situation. El Rancho has started to sell AWG Best Choice products, I believe at least, now that they are not receiving products from Albertsons. I have not been in an El Rancho recently to confirm that, but that is my understanding.

Yes, you are correct in saying that Foodarama is similar to Food Town, but Food Town is more successful than Foodarama. Foodarama has closed a number of locations in recent years, often due to lost leases, but Foodarama did recently take over the Food King in Texas City. Foodarama planned on taking down the late 1970s/early 1980s Grand Union décor that was still up at the Food King from when it used to be a Weingarten’s, but I don’t know if that actually happened.

Also no Food Towns are in former Winn-Dixie stores because Winn-Dixie never had any stores in Houston or its suburbs.

[storewanderer]

Also no Food Towns are in former Winn-Dixie stores because Winn-Dixie never had any stores in Houston or its suburbs.

What did 3322 Center in Deer Park start as? Food Lion interior but pretty sure that was no Food Lion, way too big. Seemed like. Winn Dixie...

The Food Town units in Baytown (3) and Deer Park were fully merchandised with AWG Brands Best Choice and Always Save. These brands were in all categories including drug. They had been 25% off but then went to 50% off. They're in the process of remerchandising these stores to carry Best Yet as of this writing one store at a time. For instance Deer Park was pulling the AWG items a few days ago and redoing all of the shelf plans to have Best Yet. The shelf tags also were changing.

The private label SKU assortment in the Food Town units with AWG Brands was much larger than the assortment in the stores with Best Yet. Prices on the AWG Brands even before the 50% off were also lower than comparable Best Yet items at other locations. I am not sure the AWG quality is great, Best Yet may be an upgrade in that regard as Best Yet isn't a bad label.

There were also various random AWG Brand Best Choice items on clearance in carts in the Foodarama I went into. Mostly drug items there. Center store was fully Best Yet.

[pseudo3d]

Also no Food Towns are in former Winn-Dixie stores because Winn-Dixie never had any stores in Houston or its suburbs.

What did 3322 Center in Deer Park start as? Food Lion interior but pretty sure that was no Food Lion, way too big. Seemed like. Winn Dixie...

It was built in the mid-1970s as Weingarten, a big grocery chain in Houston later bought and dismantled under Grand Union in the mid-1980s.

[storewanderer]

Also no Food Towns are in former Winn-Dixie stores because Winn-Dixie never had any stores in Houston or its suburbs.

What did 3322 Center in Deer Park start as? Food Lion interior but pretty sure that was no Food Lion, way too big. Seemed like. Winn Dixie...

It was built in the mid-1970s as Weingarten, a big grocery chain in Houston later bought and dismantled under Grand Union in the mid-1980s.

Interesting. It was a nice big store for a smaller chain (big to me... I guess still small by Texas standards). It really seemed similar to a Winn Dixie "Marketplace" Store. Of all of the Food Towns I went into, that one had by far the most attentive employees (the employees in all of them were fine, but in this store they were outstanding) and it was a bit more uplifting of an atmosphere because of it.

[wnetmacman]

What did 3322 Center in Deer Park start as? Food Lion interior but pretty sure that was no Food Lion, way too big. Seemed like. Winn Dixie...

It was built in the mid-1970s as Weingarten, a big grocery chain in Houston later bought and dismantled under Grand Union in the mid-1980s.

Interesting. It was a nice big store for a smaller chain (big to me... I guess still small by Texas standards). It really seemed similar to a Winn Dixie "Marketplace" Store. Of all of the Food Towns I went into, that one had by far the most attentive employees (the employees in all of them were fine, but in this store they were outstanding) and it was a bit more uplifting of an atmosphere because of it.

Weingarten built some interesting stores, and Food Town got some. They varied wildly in size, shape and offerings - I say that was one of their downfalls. Food Town appears to be a Fiesta-wannabe to me. They try to be most things to most people, and excel at none, unlike Fiesta.

[storewanderer]

Weingarten built some interesting stores, and Food Town got some. They varied wildly in size, shape and offerings - I say that was one of their downfalls. Food Town appears to be a Fiesta-wannabe to me. They try to be most things to most people, and excel at none, unlike Fiesta.

Food Town basically serves as a neighborhood store you would shop at for a few items, a few basic items, and that would be that. Their meat and produce is reasonably priced as well and the departments were maintained better than I expected them to be.

Given Food Town does not do any bakery, deli, pharmacy, they are basically running a 1970's grocery store model that focuses solely on center store, meat, and produce. Their staffing levels are low (result of a lack of a perimeter) and I am guessing rent on their buildings is also very low.

I think they get by to the neighborhoods they are in with the fair pricing (so people don't actively avoid them), acceptable quality meat/produce, but are not trying in any way shape or form to get someone's full basket every week. I think they are trying to be a neighborhood fill in store. They seem to be trying to do some remodels to their stores but I don't think the remodels will change anything for them, instead they should focus on self checkout additions, general maintenance (flooring that is coming up- fix it), and trying to get prices down further (since the shift from AWG brands to Best Yet I saw in Baytown area was coming with a price increase and cut in number of available private label items).

If I do a ranking of chains I visited, I preferred Food Town to Brookshire's/Super 1/Spring. While the Food Town Stores do not look as good, they have better pricing, meat, and produce. I actually did not make one purchase from Brookshire/Super 1/Spring despite going to multiple stores. While these stores looked clean and maintained, and generally seemed to have a good merchandising package, I still didn't end up with any of my typical casual trip purchases such as drinks, produce, bakery/deli, or cleaning products. Too high of prices stopped me from a couple purchases (same item 20-30% cheaper at Brookshire Brothers), and in the case of Super 1 pricing stopped me again (so many items 1 cent cheaper than Brookshire's) on some items but I did see some produce I wanted to buy but couldn't find any that wasn't already rotten on the fruits in question as I started to select my items so I again left empty handed and less than satisfied. Brookshire's/Super 1/Spring did not meet my expectations; they really need to improve their pricing. Brookshire Brothers was a little better on price but stores more outdated, and produce was very sad there (may have been an issue with the specific towns and lack of produce demand). It is funny as I expected BB was the lesser of the two chains but for me I actually preferred it.