Kroger #241 (Dickinson, Texas)

Photo by Joshua Bailey on Google Maps, cropped (source)
New entries in Houston will be posted on The Houston Files, but that doesn't apply to suburban Houston...while the Dickinson Wal-Mart was relatively short-lived, our post today is a bit further north on Gulf Freeway (around the same exit), at 3410 Gulf Freeway, the now-defunct Kroger, which operated from 1980 to its closure in 2025 (when several Houston-area Kroger stores closed around the same time). While we covered it on the "Galveston" page on Carbon-izer (currently still up, though I plan to reorganize this out of existence by the end of the month, so here's the archived version), it doesn't cover its closure.

Of note, there is a good photo of this store as to what it looked like in the early 2000s as it's on the page of CDA Architects (a commented out photo is on this page for safe-keeping) though it unfortunately shoots the renovated version in shadow, making the "Greenhouse" Kroger objectively nicer-looking (they do have another photo there).

The vacant space was a Walgreens located at 3400 Gulf Freeway, which was later incorporated into the Kroger's expansion, with the Walgreens here until 2000 (moved to 4016 Highway 3). This allowed the Kroger to become a Signature store as it went from 33,000 square feet to around 56,000 square feet. Despite its closure, it did get Kroger's new logo, if briefly. In July 2026 it reopened as Crunch Fitness.

Sussan Fine Furniture (Dickinson, Texas)

Sussan following closure. (Street View, c. 2013). With all the news of Walmart's new food establishments--Charleys Cheesesteaks, Mr. Gatti's, Wendy's, sushi bars, and a bunch more I've never heard of I think I've proof of Wal-Mart's oldest branded in-store eatery.

Before we get to that, it started back in 2012 when I came across what I referred to as "brown Wal-Marts" in my youth; the older, original Wal-Mart stores built in the 1970s and 1980s, which slowly disappeared as they were closed or renovated, when I saw Sussan, and was instantly reminded of what Wal-Mart stores, like my own, used to look like (probably with "Discount City" signage on the building).

For a while I believed it had been replaced with another Supercenter in the nearby area but that wasn't the case. The store (Wal-Mart #570) in fact only operated from July 1984 to September 1991. (No wonder. The store appeared to have major access issues.)

In 1992 it became Bud's Discount City, a discount/overstock store owned by Wal-Mart that was killed as a concept a few years later because it was cutting into Wal-Mart's own stores. Sussan Fine Furniture moved in around 1997 (moving from Texas City) with almost no updates to the store's exterior.

Sussan ended up lasting longer than Wal-Mart's ventures did, closing in 2010, and even after death, signage remained up for a few years afterward. By 2016 it was fully vacant and demolition began in late 2017.

So what was unique about the eatery? In those days, Wal-Mart operated unbranded, in-house eateries but a tax entry shows that for the first year of this Wal-Mart's existence the once-ubiquitous Corn Dog 7 operated in the spot, something that would also show up in Hypermart USA a few years later.