Swamplot Archives by Tag: Franchises

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Openings and Closings: Down the Donut Hole

October 21, 2009 – 5:57 pm

Just a couple items this time:

  • Closing: The Dunkin Donuts at 5406 Bellaire Blvd. near Bissonnet, after more than 2 decades in the same spot. When it’s gone, there’ll be just 4 of the chain’s locations left in the Houston area. The Bellaire Examiner’s Steve Mark:

    [Owner Henry] Tsao’s current agreement with the donut chain is expiring; the company requires new agreements to last a 10-year duration with a new set of parameters for facility and mechanical upgrades totaling as much as $400,000. Tsao, 62, doesn’t want to make a long-term commitment at his age and isn’t inclined to make the required financial reinvestment, so his store will close Oct. 24.

  • Moved to the Rice Village: Dog- and baby-friendly Olivine has taken over the former location of Back Be Nimble at 2405 Rice Blvd. Making the trip from Uptown Park: owner Helen Stroud’s collection of linens, loungewear, and reproduction and slipcovered furniture. In the back: baby clothes. Cote de Texas’s Joni Webb reports:

    Helen spent all of September getting the new shop ready – and if you ever wanted to check out wall to wall seagrass, this is your chance – I think she bought out all the rolls of it available in town.

Continue Reading This Story >

5:57 pm | 4 Comments | Read more about Franchises and Chain Stores, Home Decor, Neighborhoods: Bellaire, Neighborhoods: Rice Village, Openings and Closings, Restaurants, Retail
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Thursday, February 19, 2009

Openings and Closings: Galleria Gallery, Paulie’s Retreat, Not Mulch More

February 19, 2009 – 11:47 am

So what’s new?

  • Opening: There’s a big new Gallery Furniture taking over the old Pier One space in the Post Oak Shopping Center, across from the Galleria. Isiah Carey notes that there’s a (much smaller) “coming soon” sign out front. Also coming to the strip from Mattress Mack: a new and more upscale Kreiss Furniture store, where Pier One Kids used to be.
  • Closed: Paulie’s restaurant reports receiving an undisclosed “offer we couldn’t refuse” to close its Holcombe at Kirby location, and dutifully complied on Monday. The original Paulie’s, on Westheimer at Driscoll, will remain open.
  • Hoping to Spread: And Katharine Shilcutt reports that Otilia’s Mexican restaurant, the longtime Long Point standout, now “a bastion of the upper class yuppies who reside quietly in the nearby Memorial Villages and wash down their rice and beans with bottles of Merlot,” isn’t closing, despite rumors she had heard. But:

    it turns out instead that Otilia’s is actively seeking to franchise their restaurant. A bright sign by the register blinked this advertisement every five seconds as we ate, while the waitresses sullenly confirmed this fact.

Then there’s that Main St. mulch . . .

Continue Reading This Story >

11:47 am | 7 Comments | Read more about Art, Furniture, Neighborhoods: Long Point, Neighborhoods: Museum District, Neighborhoods: Southgate, Openings and Closings, Parking, Restaurants, Retail
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Friday, January 23, 2009

Burger Chains Ready Attack on Houston: Carl’s Jr., Smashburger, Five Guys

January 23, 2009 – 9:38 am

A new company has signed an agreement to open 121 new Carl’s Jr. franchises in Texas — including as many as 40 in the Houston area — over the next 10 years. But it’ll take a while for them to get started here at least. The Houston Business Journal’s Allison Wollam reports that RWJP Star Enterprises has

a franchise agreement to open locations in the eastern part of Houston, and [partner Rich] White expects the first location to open in the first quarter of next year. They are still in the process of scouting sites, the first of which will be built from the ground up.

Carl’s Jr. franchises have to agree to open at least three units, for a total initial investment of $1.3 million, according to the company’s Web site.

Will the year-long wait leave enough time for other competing newcomers to get established? Wollam reports Smashburger is planning to open a second location at Briarforest and Eldridge later this month. And:

Continue Reading This Story >

9:38 am | 8 Comments | Read more about Proposed Developments, Restaurants, Retail
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Friday, November 21, 2008

Not Just Spring Chicken

November 21, 2008 – 10:53 am
   

More chain chicken joints are heading this way: “At least 10 area Zaxby’s locations are planned by franchisees Jim Stokes and Matt Monds, with the first slated to open in January in Spring. Monds is a former Chick-fil-A operator who had been looking for a reason to return to the Houston area. Monds says the franchisees already have scouted the next few locations and hope to be able to open a new restaurant every six months. Zaxby’s most popular items are hand-breaded Chicken Fingerz and Jumbo Buffalo Wings, smothered in a choice of eight sauces with names like Wimpy, Tongue Torch, Nuclear and Insane. The 3,495-square-foot Spring restaurant can seat 90 guests and will offer drive-thru and phone-in services. Company officials think the Texas market can support as many as 250 Zaxby’s restaurants, with 50 of those in the Houston area.” [Houston Business Journal]

10:53 am | 1 Comment | Read more about Neighborhoods: Spring, Openings and Closings, Quicklink, Restaurants
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Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Smashburger: Meat Candy for Strip Centers

November 19, 2008 – 2:54 pm

“Houston’s first Smashburger is going into an unnamed strip center at the intersection of Main Street and Kirby Drive, right beside Reliant Center,” reports Globe St.’s Connie Gore:

[Ryan McMonagle, Smashburger's CFO] tells GlobeSt.com that Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston each will start with two “grade A-plus locations” this year and reach eight to 10 before 2009 ends, putting the new chain on “a clear path to 30 over the next three-year period” in each city.

What’s a Smashburger?

Jason Sheehan of the Houston Press’s sister publication Denver Westword says it’s a burger joint where

the burgers are truly smashed — thrown and mashed onto the flat-top grill with a press that I at first thought was for show, then realized played an important role. When a half-pound of ground, nicely fatty Angus beef is whacked onto the hot steel, it produces a flood of meat juice that caramelizes instantly into a crispy halo of blood and fat around the edge of the burger. It’s like meat candy, the delicacy you lose when a burger is cooked on a slotted grill — the traditional cooking surface for burgers smashed by hand.

Photo of Denver Smashburger interior: Flickr user johnny_nissan [license]

2:54 pm | 6 Comments | Read more about Neighborhoods: Reliant Center, Openings and Closings, Restaurants, Retail, Strip Centers
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Thursday, September 18, 2008

Coming Soon to Houston: More of the Pitter-Patter of Little Pita Pits

September 18, 2008 – 4:37 pm

Pita Pit, 3303 C Highway 6, Sugar Land, Texas

Sandwich franchise Pita Pit has a store tucked inside a Greenway Plaza office building. Two more locations debuted recently: one at Highway 6 and Williams Trace in Sugar Land (opened in May) and another in the tunnel beneath McKinney St. Downtown (opened in July). A new store in a strip center at Westheimer and Fountainview is listed as “coming soon” on the company website.

Now a source reports that a total of 10 Pita Pit franchises are planned for the Houston area — including one in the shopping center at 3939 Montrose Blvd., just north of the Hurricane-Ike-swept Diedrich’s Coffee, near Marble Slab.

Photo of Sugar Land Pita Pit: Pita Pit

4:37 pm | 2 Comments | Read more about Neighborhoods: Downtown, Neighborhoods: Montrose, Neighborhoods: Sugar Land, Openings and Closings, Restaurants, Shopping Centers, Strip Centers
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Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Putting the Bed in Bedroom Communities

June 24, 2008 – 2:14 pm
   

Mattress Firm celebrates the opening of its 500th store. You keep building those strip centers, they’ll take care of the rest! [Houston Business Journal]

2:14 pm | 3 Comments | Read more about Furniture, Quicklink, Retail, Shopping Centers, Strip Centers
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Monday, February 11, 2008

Death and Mortadella

February 11, 2008 – 8:37 am

Spicy Pickle Sub Shop, Las Vegas, NV

Isn’t this a big part of what makes Houston great? Anyone can move in here and . . . set up a chain of franchise sub shops! Coming soon to our city: 10 new Spicy Pickle sandwich stores. The local franchisee, Peter Forastiere, ran a related family business in Springfield, Massachusetts:

“I’ve always felt there were similarities between the restaurant business and the funeral home business,” Forastiere says. “People are very sensitive during a time of grief, and people are also very sensitive with what they put in their stomachs. The products may be different, but the customer service is very similar.”

Imagine how much better we could all have been eating here — if only SCI had realized this sooner.

Photo of Las Vegas Spicy Pickle: Flickr user purpletwinkie

8:37 am | Read more about Restaurants
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Thursday, November 15, 2007

Stuck in Traffic? Pull Over for a Philly Cheesesteak by the Wayside

November 15, 2007 – 11:36 am

New Shopping Center at the Northeast Corner of I-45 South and Wayside, Houston

The Lenny’s Sub Shops continue their Houston conquest. The franchise is now up to seventeen stores, with eleven opening soon, including one in this new shopping center about to begin construction on the Gulf Freeway feeder just north of Wayside. That’s almost a third of the way to the company’s goal!

The I-45 (northbound) and Wayside property developer is Bobby Orr, who complained to the Chronicle’s Nancy Sarnoff about the glut of suburban strip centers back in June: “We’re going urban,” he said. And really, the Orr Commercial properties are all over the map. But don’t be fooled by the side-of-the-freeway location and strip-center layout on this one: Luring hungry drivers out of inner-loop freeway traffic jams is an important part of Houston’s urban spirit.

11:36 am | Read more about Commercial Real Estate, Development Strategy, Neighborhoods: East End, New Construction, Restaurants, Retail, Shopping Centers, Strip Centers
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Friday, June 22, 2007

Here Come the Franchise Biodiesel Plants

June 22, 2007 – 7:55 am

Biodiesel Production Plant in Carl’s Corner, TexasSure, everybody’s excited about biodiesel because it’s new and rare. But just wait until smelly biodiesel production plants start littering the landscape like fast-food franchises.

If you’ve got $1.95 million, you can set one up too. A company out of Florida is selling “prepackaged,” turnkey biodiesel plants from a German factory. Let them come, and they will build it:

As part of its business-in-a-box plan, Xenerga promises long-term, exclusive deals to purchase waste cooking oil from a network of suppliers whose clients include McDonald’s Corp. and Chili’s Grill & Bar. Xenerga’s supply side also focuses on rendered animal fats like beef tallow, chicken grease and pig fat, all of which are plentiful in Texas.

Interest from this region has been strong, the company told the Houston Business Journal: a plant in west Houston is planned already.

Xenerga also promises to deliver customers willing to buy the estimated 5 million gallons of biodiesel per year that the plants produce.

Each Xenerga plant only takes up half an acre, requires two employees at a time, and can be sited almost anywhere from light industrial parks to rural farmland.

Photo: Biodiesel production plant in Carl’s Corner, Texas, by flickr user Nicola Matsukis

7:55 am | Read more about Alternative Energy, Environmental, Green Design and Development
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Monday, June 18, 2007

Shopping Center Update: Franchises, Anchors, and All Those Nail Salons

June 18, 2007 – 7:49 am

Three items from the world of Houston shopping-center development:

  • A suburban shopping-center developer complains to the Chronicle about Houston’s glut of bland suburban strip centers:

    Retail developer Bobby Orr says the suburbs are overridden with unanchored strip centers, so his company is developing projects closer to the center of town . . .

    Orr believes there are “only so many nail salons and dry cleaners” that can fill up suburban centers and that there’s pent-up demand in urban areas where housing density is increasing.

  • As if on cue, two former Subway franchise owners tell the Houston Business Journal that they’re going to flood the Houston market with more than a hundred new Submarina sandwich shops. The first store opens the beginning of August, at I-45 and Airline.
  • And speaking of anchors, the HBJ also reports that Staples will soon be rescuing shopping centers all around Houston from that nail-biting anonymity:

    Staples officials are tight-lipped about the company’s plans for Houston, but local retail sources say they’ve seen Staples stores on as many as 11 different site plans for future retail developments ranging from Katy, to League City to Spring, as well as a close-in site at Post Oak and San Felipe.

    Staples has already signed a lease for a new store at I-45 South and Almeda Genoa.

7:49 am | Read more about Shopping Centers, Strip Centers
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