Randall’s
Growing up in Houston in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s my mom shopped at a Randall’s grocery, (http://www.randalls.com/ShopStores/Home.page), at I-45 North and Tidwell at Northtown Plaza. Randall’s was a quality grocer in a fairly barren grocery landscape. Even then, I remember the produce and meat selections were far superior to the options. When I set up my first household in Houston, Randall’s was close by and became my standard go to. If Randall’s didn’t have it, I probably didn’t need it.
In 1999, Randall’s was acquired by Safeway and the quality suffered. In 2015, Safeway sold the chain to Alberston’s, but I haven’t noticed much improvement. Many stores closed and while there are still several of them around, it is not rare to find more employees than shoppers strolling the aisles. Honestly, every time I (rarely) enter one, I wonder how they’ve managed to remain open. Let me reiterate, they used to be great stores. The best in town.
But it’s been a while. The nadir for me came about ten or twelve years ago at the Dairy Ashford/Memorial store. I spotted an island display of navel oranges about six or seven high. I’m guessing there were maybe two hundred, two hundred fifty oranges. About one in every six or seven had gray green fuzzy mold covering anywhere from ten to thirty percent of the surface. WTH?
I grabbed a produce guy and drug him over and showed him what I had discovered. You should have seen the look on his face. Sheer, utter…
Apathy.
He couldn’t possibly have cared less. I don’t know what I expected because you couldn’t really miss them. It’s not like he didn’t already know he was displaying a huge stack of “fuzzy navels”. (Sorry – couldn’t resist.)
I went and found a manager and drug him over to see them, and he seemed genuinely shocked and perturbed, but again – “He had to know, right?”.
While I had already abandoned Randall’s as my primary grocer, that was pretty much the end of any respect I once harbored for them. I‘m in the area of that same Randall’s pretty much weekly, but I only stop in once or twice a year. I even usually buy something and have never again seen anything as nasty as those oranges, but I have so many other choices that I enjoy so much more, why bother?
One thing they do very well is their in-store fried chicken. It’s a holdover from before the sale of the chain and when fresh, it’s excellent.
What makes it Special: Fried Chicken. Not much else.
What makes it Avoidable: Higher prices, poor meat and produce departments.
