RANDALLS

Apologies for the incompleteness of this page. This is very much a work in progress. Over 50 years ago, Randalls opened for the first time with the acquisition of other stores. With the 50th Anniversary of Randalls, I've decided to make this page listing every Randalls store in history. The column marked "R" is the original numbering as given by Randalls. The "S" is the Safeway numbering. To begin, there needs to be a brief history.

Randalls was founded as a new supermarket out of the Minimax stores (from what I can tell, Minimax was a sort of grocer's cooperative) in 1966, and established itself as a "better" grocery store, slightly more expensive than competitors but with quality in mind and great perishable departments. Unfortunately, the purchase of Cullum Companies, which operated the similar Tom Thumb in Dallas, left the company struggling with debt. It started to close as many stores as it opened, and in 1999, the company was sold to Safeway.

Unfortunately, while Safeway kept the Randalls name and adopted some of its policies, like gas stations at stores, the goal was to make Randalls a Safeway in all but name, and it showed. Safeway significantly altered the product mix of stores to make it in-line with their stores out west and dramatically cut expenses. With services deteriorating and product mix altered, shoppers left Randalls in droves for its competitors.

To make matters worse, all this happened at a time when H-E-B started to build full-line stores in town, which DID have good merchandising that Randalls now lacked. By 2014, Randalls' market share was now a fraction of what it had been before Safeway and a market pull-out seemed imminent, especially what had just happened with Dominick's in Chicago. This was halted when Albertsons came in. While Albertsons hasn't restored Randalls to its former glory, it has opened one store and has plans to build another, as well as allowing the chain to turn 50. Here's to another 50 years!

The numbering of the chain's stores was initially counting up from #1 and numbers were not reused (with the exception of #1, interestingly). Stores were added chronologically, anything prior to #10 is pre-1980, we start getting into New Generation stores around #50, and finally the late 1990s caps off with stores in the high 60s (you can really see how much the chain grew dramatically in the 1980s and then almost grinding to a halt in the early 1990s after the Tom Thumb acquisition), but I can't see rhyme or reason to Safeway's numbering. It almost looks like they continued with the last two digits of Randalls, as the stores were renamed to but there are overlapping numbers.

As of this writing, this is the third page. Updates include:
* A few more Austin-area stores were added as well as fixing an error.
* The sad closure of the Division has been mentioned.
* Fixed location of Jamail's.
* Finally fixed the paragraphs above with proper line breaks.
* The reveal of #55 being Humble all but confirms that #53 is in fact College Station, which explains why it wasn't in the 1994 phone book (not in Houston) or 1999 online (already closed), plus it was 1991 not 1992 which would not make it #57.
* An error regarding the locations of Kingwood's Randalls was fixed (#1057 IS #57) with the 2000 store added.
* Went back and changed a lot of the street names to proper abbreviations or full names.
* Updates to #20 made.
* A few little changes here and there to add more information to entries.
* Made the list look more like the other Albertsons lists.

The second version of this page had updated:
* #1 originally did have a different location.
* #5, #9, #16, and #19 were not found in the 1974 directory either. Previously, this was recorded as being not found in 1982.
* #6 updated. It looks like #40 was replaced with #69 (#40 has been added).
* #14 has an (*) under its Safeway numbering to indicate that it changed store numbers under Safeway.
* #52 was added. This was the Pasadena store that was sold to Albertsons.
* #54 was updated. It was Jamail's after all. However, yet it wasn't--it was moved from within the shopping center.
* #17 was revealed to be the Conroe Randalls via the same source that gave me numbers for Houston's Albertsons.
* #55 was revealed to be a short-lived Humble store (former Fiesta) and #40 was the store that MOVED to a former Fiesta.
* #70 was updated (RIP).
* Main sources for this list included the 1982 phone book, an archived version of Randalls' website (c. 1999) and selected Yellow Pages on Microfilms (including 1974, 1982, 1990, and 1994).
* A few Austin stores were added. Yes, I know I lack many of the Austin stores and a few of the Safeway-built stores.