Retail Watchers

Here in Texas, H-E-B has solved the toilet paper problem by trucking in supplies from Mexico. The store I was at today in Austin had an entire aisle (!!!) and an endcap filled with 4-packs of chamomile-scented Vogue toilet paper, a brand sold by Kimberly-Clark’s Mexico division.

Four of the 5 Houston-area Randalls stores closed earlier this year have been listed for lease/sublease. In one case — Panther Creek — there’s a little more than 7 years left on the lease. The Clear Lake store has 4 years left and one of the two Kingwood stores that closed has 3 years left. The fact...

I got Monopoly tickets tonight at a Randalls store in Austin. Maybe it’s a store-by-store decision? A week ago, this store (183/Braker) was pretty well stocked, while the H-E-B across the street was essentially stripped bare. Tonight, nope. Randalls was out of paper bags. Plastic only. No wipes for ...

Randalls is getting dragged on Twitter after a well-known someone claimed employees were being mistreated. Not a good look for Albertsons ...

As mentioned above, H-E-B has been hit hard. I’ve seen photos from stores across the state that have quite nearly been stripped clean. No meat, no veggies, no pasta sauce, no canned veggies and of course no paper products. They claim they started preparing a month ago and are in a good position to r...

Today is the last day for these 5 stores. The Panther Creek location closed early because they basically ran out of merchandise.

Here’s hoping the remaining locations can hang on.

Ok, here are shots of the closing Panther Creek store in The Woodlands. You’ll notice it’s in better shape than Grogan’s Mill. Still looks kind of dated though with the original Lifestyle decor. This location has really low ceilings around the perimeter of the store, so they had to make some modific...

I went to the Grogan’s Mill (Buckthorne) location in The Woodlands tonight. It was sad, but not surprising, to see that it was busier now that the store closing sale has started than it was back when it was business as usual. Already a good chunk of the center store items are gone — probably about a...

There’s no realistic buyer if Albertsons decides to unload the Austin-area Randalls stores. H-E-B has a 60% market share in Central Texas. It’s not like Houston where you have 3 grocers (Kroger, H-E-B and Walmart) essentially tied with about 25% of the market apiece and eager to grow. Pretty much al...

Both the stores in The Woodlands have interesting histories. The Panther Creek store was initially a Jamail’s. It does pretty good business. I was actually just in it last month and it had a decent amount of shoppers. Not slammed, but certainly humming. I did notice, however, that the in-store Wells...