Bastrop H-E-B plus! (Bastrop, Texas)

I don't have a picture of H-E-B plus!, this is from Community Impact. Cropped. (Amanda Cutshall)
As of this writing, the Bastrop Highway 71 page will be getting another redo that removes the H-E-B from the list, despite it facing Highway 71 (it has the address of 104 North Hasler Boulevard), and it's worth talking about here.

H-E-B plus! is the de facto supermarket in Bastrop (Albertsons, Kroger, or Randalls was never here) and opened in 2003. The old H-E-B was 50,000 square feet and located directly across from North Hasler. I remember seeing both and thinking that the new H-E-B didn't look much bigger than the old one, but it was a deeper store, with the old store being 50,000 square feet and the new one being 91,000 square feet. In November 2014 it finished an expansion, rebranding it as an H-E-B Plus (at about 119,000 square feet). Ten years later another expansion was announced that would add another 21,000 square feet which would add True Texas BBQ, additional Curbside service, and an expanded tortilla department. BastropTexas.net has pictures of H-E-B when it was brand-new. The clock tower is still there.

H-E-B Lockhart (Lockhart, Texas)

Google Maps Street View, with some of the more glaring watermarks crudely edited out.
This is probably going to be the last Lockhart entry before the old page gets rewritten as "Lockhart McDonald's". It concerns the Lockhart H-E-B (#445) at 403 South Colorado Street. It's the only full-line supermarket in the Lockhart area. The much more modern store at 45,000 square feet was originally opened in 1997. Prior to this a much smaller H-E-B faced east on the same lot (about 25k square feet, sharing the building with another tenant). While they were closed, they apparently temporarily occupied the space of Super S Foods at 1220 S. Colorado Street.

Anyway, I've added the oldest Street View which I believe represents the store from 1997, by 2009 the awnings had been repainted a rusty red color, and more recently (in the early 2020s) the physical footprint of the store was expanded when it added a Curbside department.

Waco's Wyatt Food Store (Waco, Texas)

Kroger's lone stand in Waco was only for a year. It was not Kroger's only attempt in the Waco-Temple-Killeen area, though!
Have I got a story for you. It involves Kroger, H-E-B, Pancho's, and the Taliban, and it all goes back to an iconic arch.

In February 1961, Kroger opened its first Central Texas location of Wyatt Food Stores, a grocery chain based out of Dallas. Alongside this was Wyatt's Cafeteria, a restaurant chain which was owned by Earle Wyatt (having sold the supermarket chain to Kroger in 1958).¹ These held the addresses of 512 N. 20th Street and 510 N. 20th Street, respectively, though oftentimes the grocery store used the 510 address. A year later, however, Kroger announced it would be selling the Wyatt store to H-E-B, which changed over in March 1962² (replacing one of their smaller stores³, the merchandise from Wyatt was moved back to Dallas stores while H-E-B used one of theirs), ending Wyatt's Central Texas expansion. H-E-B continued to operate the store. Meanwhile, Wyatt's Cafeteria closed this location in 1969 and replaced by a Pancho's Mexican Buffet in 1970 (which did not last a year). H-E-B later absorbed the space, as the space was enormous, with 12,000 square feet of space (compared to the main store's 22k square feet, and in 1975 a 34k square feet supermarket was quite respectable). In October 1983, with the opening of a new store at 1428 Wooded Acres Drive, H-E-B shuttered the store for good, and that's how it would remain for the next 25 years. In 1985 there were plans to open a "tire warehouse and distribution center" on the site but neighborhood resistance caused the city to deny the request. Fast forward to 1999, when Antioch Community Church chose this site for their new church site. (A picture of the site as to how it appeared in 1998 is there).

Antioch briefly made national news when two of its missionaries were detained shortly before 9/11 in Afghanistan by the Taliban, and we know from articles at the time Antioch used the 510 address. By 2007, Antioch's building still resembled the old Wyatt/H-E-B, though no longer had braces for the lettering. Around 2012, the church began to build an expansion in front of the current building, deleting the Wyatt facade.⁴

But the arch persisted.

Located to the corner property and ground level (and briefly sporting some spots of paint from previous years gone by, with bits of red and blue paint toward the roofline), the arch stands near the corner of North 20th Street and Fort Avenue. Even if its original purpose is forgotten by many, it's heartwarming to see early 1960s retail architecture maintained and restored in some way. Below are a few other pictures and ads of relevance.

1. "Wyatt Food Store Opens Here Tuesday", Waco Tribune-Herald, February 12, 1961.
2. "H.E.B. Open At Wyatt Site Today", Waco News-Tribune, March 8, 1962.
3. This replaced a smaller H-E-B store at 18th Street and Austin Avenue.
4. At this point, the church also switched addresses to 505 N. 20th Street (occupying a former Sears Auto Center, which it also renovated).

H-E-B Pantry Orange (Orange, Texas)

Picture from August 2025 by author
Among the things I did on my vacation was visit a few grocery stores, and one of these was the H-E-B Pantry Foods in Orange, Texas. Well, it's branded as an H-E-B now (has been since at least summer 2008) and has been kicking around since its opening in August 1991 (there's a plaque outside of the door, as well as another honoring a deceased manager). Rumor is H-E-B has purchased Northway Shopping Center near I-10 to develop into a new H-E-B and additional retail but that's probably at least a year away.

Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of the inside as I was still on a bit of a deadline (and hit Houston right at rush hour) and one of the only photos on Google that's not an H-E-B stock photo is this shot from 2017 (the aisle signs have been replaced, but otherwise looks pretty accurate). Inside-wise, it resembles the Pantry store I remember growing up with a few changes. They've clearly tried to fit more merchandise in, produce is cramped and bumps up right against the main grocery aisle (produce on the right to the front) while the bakery area (Pantry stores had a small bakery) had been removed for additional space (it's where the water was found and I think some HBA items were there as well). It is a tiny store at around 27,000 square feet. A new-build H-E-B is about four times that size (but wastes a lot of space, here nothing is wasted).

I know I saw an ad once that indicated someone drove from Louisiana for that H-E-B (before the short-lived Lake Charles store, anyway) but I can't find it at this time. The store number is #35 according to H-E-B's current website as well as what we currently have as H-E-B Pantry's full listing. (I did not visit the former Kroger Family Center nearby).

The H-E-B is located at 2424 North 16th Street, Orange, TX, 77630.

MarketPlace Shopping Center (Temple, Texas)

I would say this does more business than Temple Mall next door.
I've been trying to think of what to do for this site. I bounced around ideas (soft reboot and focus on a more consistent topic, refocusing on stuff off of highways instead of anything, a Texas-exclusive focus) but in the end I thought what I had been doing, is doing posts on a very small selection of buildings, not large directories, meaning posts like this will have to be broken up or removed. Already I did stuff like spin off Big's Meat Market from a larger Buda/Kyle topic.

As part of this new revamp, the focus is on MarketPlace Shopping Center in Temple. I've uploaded a PDF of the shopping center as of 2025 here (archived from here and wanted to discuss a few of the major tenants in more detail, particularly H-E-B, Kohl's, and the restaurants out front. It recycles content from Carbon-izer.com as well, though the future posts will have more care taken for them.

The Kohl's (located at 3170 S. 31st Street) started out as a Woolco in 1980 (moving from an I-35 location), then after the entire Woolco chain folded, it became a Montgomery Ward in 1983 and operating to the end of the chain's life (early 2001) but remained with signage up a few years afterward. The Kohl's opened in September 2011 according to this article and should be noted that as Montgomery Ward, its address was 3002A S. 31st Street. H-E-B is the other major anchor (opened in 1980) and I've been to it at least once, and it's been renovated more than once. I believe it was last renovated in the mid-2010s (before that, carrying circa-2000 decor) though I don't know the details of the store's opening. Many of the older tenants carry the 3002 address like H-E-B but the modern ones like Kohl's no longer do.

The three restaurants out front are also of interest.

Photo from Showcase.
The Whataburger (1415 SW H K Dodgen Loop) is perhaps the most interesting. I remember stopping at this location sometime in late 2016 or early 2017 after a day of outside work at a ranch. While the cold drink and the protein of the hamburger revived my spirits, I was intrigued by the large, "Playplace" part of the building, as if it had a playground at one point. The room was closed to the public (it was used as employee offices/storage, apparently) and while the thought of Whataburger having a playground wasn't out of the question (I seem to recall a kid's meal mascot, for instance) it hadn't actually occurred to me that it was in fact not a Whataburger to begin with, having been a Burger King opened in 1999 but closed within a decade. It was seized by U.S. Marshals in November 2004 (it did not reopen) and in November 2007 was reopened as a Whataburger. Before Whataburger was built, a Pizza Hut was here from 1991 to 1997. Before that I'm not sure, if anything, what was there. Next to it is Starbucks (1313 SW H K Dodgen Loop), opened as Golden Fried Chicken (Golden Chick) in 1999 and became Starbucks around April 2004 (I believe Golden Chick closed late 2003). You can see another photo of the Starbucks at StarbucksEverywhere.net. Finally, Taco Bell, at 1201 SW H K Dodgen Loop is the oldest of the three, and had changed its store number store number (2308) and address (3002 South 31st Street, the number of the whole plaza) in 2014 to the Dodgen Loop address and a new store number (30125) without rebuilding. Despite looking nothing like the original 1983 store, BCAD indicates the building is original to 1983 (just expanded).