Circle K Jarrell (Jarrell, Texas)

Vintage Aerial, link below.
This truck stop at 9115 North Interstate 35 has been here since the 1970s, and as of 1983 was a Fina, and during most of its life had a truck stop restaurant inside. In 1990, the truck stop was a self-branded Texas Star (having been branded as such since around the time the Fina picture was taken).

By 2007, Texas Star was still the store, but the gas brand was a Shell, and featured just a Subway inside as far as the restaurant went. Texas Star was purchased by Circle K's parent company in October 2015 and by the next year, the deal had closed and the Circle K name was on the building, ending the 25+ year era of Texas Star. In the following years, the gas station made changes—by March 2021, a new electronic sign was added that also showed the diesel price, and by May of 2022, the Shell branding went away (as well as the Subway inside). It is a rare "Truck Diesel" Circle K gas station, featuring a green bar under the orange part of the Circle K logo. In another time this would've been a Circle K Truxtop. It has a Krispy Krunchy inside as of 2025 (replacing Subway, likely).

There are no longer any outbuildings on the property as seen above, there are a few covered areas for taco trucks and about where the house(?) was there's now "Essential Calibration & Alignment" at 35931 Ronald Reagan Boulevard.

Whole Foods Market on Bellaire Boulevard (Houston, Texas)

This entry was previously found on Carbon-izer (this page, originally--archived here) with updates.

The Whole Foods Market at 4004 Bellaire Boulevard has an interesting history. The first recorded tenant for this address was Henke & Pillot (#17) back in 1949. In 1961, Henke & Pillot closed the store down (big changes were coming for Henke & Pillot—by the end of the 1960s they would take on their corporate parent's name...Kroger!). In 1963, it opened as FedMart, which by this time had dropped the membership requirement from its foundings back in California. The Bellaire FedMart was different from the Mykawa and Wirt stores in the early days. It had different times of operation (opening and closing earlier in the day), smaller (and had less advertised items available), and lacked a rail spur, which the other two had. The store closed around 1979 (FedMart would leave Houston and go out of business within a few years after that). In 1980, "The Grocery Store", a locally-owned discount supermarket opened in the space. The store was a bare-bones discount grocer, it didn't accept checks, had no perishables, and bag-your-own groceries and survived most of the 1980s. (Houston Historic Retail later covered The Grocery Store in more detail). Ye Seekers (also known as Seekers) opened in 1991 (1992?). This full-service natural foods store featured a meat department, deli, bulk foods, cosmetics, beer & wine, seafood, bakery, and even a restaurant. Around 1998 it closed, and in 2000, it was absorbed, along with a defunct exercise gym and a Discovery Zone, into a Whole Foods Market, which also adapted the marquee of Bellaire Theater (in the same strip center) as part of the supermarket's signage. This was the most significant change 4004 Bellaire had ever seen, with its outdated loading facilities also rebuilt.

Google Street View can be found here.

Piccadilly (Baton Rouge, Louisiana)

Picture by author, July 2024
Located at 5474 Essen Lane, according to newspaper articles, the Baton Rouge Essen Lane Piccadilly originally opened March 1983 and in 2002 completed a inside-and-out renovation after a brief closure¹, although my picture doesn't do it justice, if you look at Google Maps, between 2008 and 2011 it looks slightly different (awnings different, as well as a different logo, when it was still the full "Piccadilly Cafeteria").

I'd never eaten at Piccadilly (Cafeteria) before I went there in July 2024. They closed their last location in Texas in 2014 at the Almeda Mall (still locked as if it could reopen the next day--though it could use a vacuuming), so if I wanted to get Piccadilly on my trip it would have to be Louisiana. Maybe I just made a mistake with the fried fish but I think I still prefer Luby's as far as the fish went.

1. "Scoop du jour", September 5, 2002, The Advocate.