Dallas Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1928-1986

This is a list of all known chain grocery addresses in Dallas between 1928 and 1986, compiled from city directories, telephone books, and other sources. It is generated through a live Google Spreadsheet so it reflects the latest information I have.

View and download a copy of this location spreadsheet via Google Sheets.

Notes:

  • Dallas is quite fascinating if for no other reason than the fact that it is one of the few places where A&P, Kroger, and Safeway all competed pretty aggressively in the 1960s and 1970s.
  • Shopping center addresses have been mapped to their street addresses as much as possible.
  • There seems to be very little logic as to how the directional indicators are applied to Dallas streets. I have gone with what was listed in the city directories and have made them as consistent as possible.
  • Safeway and Piggly Wiggly were co-owned in the 1930s. The later Piggly Wiggly stores belonged to an unrelated franchisee.
  • Kroger acquired the Wyatt stores in 1958, but did not rebrand them until sometime between 1965 and 1970.
  • Kroger also seems to have tested a discount format named Bi Lo around 1970. A&P operated A-Mart discount stores at the same time.
  • I have not included chains that were essentially convenience or “dairy” stores (e.g. 7-11, Cabells, Mister M, Quickie, Pedigo’s, U-Tote-Em, Schepps).
  • Tom Thumb seems to have operated as a co-op or franchise from the late 1930s to about 1960, but there also were company-owned stores starting in 1948 (if not earlier) with the purchase of Toro Supermarkets. Read more here.

Store tags:

  • A&P
  • Jewel T
  • Kroger
  • Minyard’s
  • Piggly Wiggly
  • Safeway
  • Skaggs-Albertsons
  • Tom Thumb
  • Worth
  • Wrigley
  • Wyatt
Updated on 26 November 2022

One thought on “Dallas Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1928-1986

  1. Don

    April 15, 2019 at 8:40pm

    There was a small chain that my mother-in-law worked for in Oak Cliff back in the 60s called L & S Food Market. They were sold to Brancato’s around 1970. Did not see them listed. I thought they had more than 1 store, but maybe not. As I recall, L & S stood for Lowery & Stresnik. Not sure on the spelling.

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    • Bill

      November 30, 2021 at 6:13pm

      You are correct, there were 2 L&S food stores in Oak Cliff ( a suburb of Dallas ). One was located I believe on Polk, which I think is listed on this site. The other was located on W. Kiest blvd ( on the corner of Hampton Rd. and Kiest blvd.) I worked at this store during my Junior and Senior years in high school. There was also an L&S store located in Duncanville, TX, where I also worked during my last semester of high school, which was the spring of 1965.

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  2. Stephen Cumming

    January 15, 2020 at 3:09am

    Kroger entered the Dallas/Ft.Worth makes with the purchase of the Wyatt Food Store chain in 1958. The agreement called for Kroger to retain the Wyatt name for a period of five years. After that time, all of the Wyatt stores were re-branded as Kroger stores. In the late 60’s/early 70’s Kroger tried a “warehouse store” concept called “Bi-Lo.” They converted several of their older stores to the Bi-Lo concept, which was used until 1973 when the stores were then returned to the Kroger brand and the Bi-Lo concept was dropped. When the Wyatt family sold the grocery stores to Kroger, it did not include the Wyatt Cafeteria chain, which remained as a separate entity. It was not uncommon to see a Kroger store next to a Wyatt Cafeteria.

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    • Barb Bamberger

      May 21, 2022 at 2:33pm

      Not a chain but an independent grocer with a real butcher was located on Garland Rd near location of arboretum now.. it was there in 1971 when we lived nearby. Can’t remember the name. Anybody??

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  3. Raymond N Aikens

    January 31, 2020 at 4:43pm

    Does anyone know where the Safeway “store of the future” was located in South Arlington?

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  4. Stephen Cumming

    April 1, 2020 at 11:27pm

    One additional note about Wyatt/Kroger. Kroger opened a new store at 100 Westcliff Mall in 1962 when the mall opened. The store was originally opened as a Wyatt Food Store, and in 1965 it was changed over to the Kroger format which it remained until it was closed and replaced with a new Kroger Store at the south side of Hampton and Ledbetter. I remember this Wyatt/Kroger so well, as I lived in the neighborhood and my Mother shopped at the Wyatt’s store. I also worked at the same Kroger store later when I was in High School. It was a small store which Kroger was gradually phasing out in favor of the Super Store concept – a 50,000sf store with Bakery, Deli, Flower shop, etc. This of course was quickly becoming the industry standard whereby most all retail grocers today embrace this concept. People expect to be able to do “one stop shopping” when they go grocery shopping. Our stores today have become so much more than just grocery stores.

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  5. James Sullivan

    August 13, 2021 at 3:00pm

    Thanks for putting this together! This is really comprehensive (just a shame it doesn’t also include some of the close-in suburbs, like Richardson, Irving, Carrollton, Garland – although I know they weren’t listed in city directories.) I was born in 1981, so I missed the days of A&P in Dallas – but I remember Safeway very well. When I was growing up in the 1980s, our big chains were:
    – Tom Thumb: then regarded as the “nicest” chain, with stores located mostly in affluent areas. When Tom Thumb closed a store, it usually meant the neighborhood was starting to turn south. Accordingly, it’s interesting to look on this map and see they had once stores in South Oak Cliff, West Dallas and Pleasant Grove. Cannot possibly a Tom Thumb store in those neighborhoods today!
    – Safeway: seemed like they were on every corner in the 1980s, until one day they weren’t! They left the market in (I believe) 1987, and most of their locations were either picked up by competitors or turned to other uses. In my hometown (Carrollton) one of our Safeways became a Kroger, one became an AutoZone, and one sat empty for about eight years before becoming a gym.
    – Kroger: much like today, these were hit or miss depending on the part of the town and how much the store manager cared. The 1980s “greenhouse” stores were always nice inside, but there were some pretty hair-raising older Kroger stores around town, too.

    We also had Winn-Dixie (who had acquired Buddies to enter the Dallas market), Skaggs Alpha Beta, and Albertsons, although none of those three had the same expansive footprint as the three listed above. Skaggs got swallowed up into Albertsons in 1991 (there was a strange year or so where all the former Skaggs stores in Dallas were branded Jewel-Osco) which turned Albertsons into a big player in DFW through the 1990s and 2000s. Finally, we had locally-headquartered Minyard, who was peppered around town but never really seemed to have much traction anywhere.

    I miss seeing such a wide range of mainline grocery chains around town. These days it’s Tom Thumb, Kroger, a much-reduced Albertsons, a whole lot of Walmart and Target, and not much else. There are a lot of niche players like WinCo, Market Street and Central Market, though, and ethnic chains like Fiesta, 99 Ranch and H-Mart.

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  6. Tanya

    June 21, 2022 at 1:20am

    When I was growing up in Richardson (1974-1996), we had Safeway, Winn-Dixie, Kroger, Skaggs/ Skaggs Albertsons/ Skaggs Alpha Beta/Albertsons, Minyard, Tom Thumb, and then later Whole Foods. My brother worked for Whole Foods in Richardson and then later the one on Greenville Avenue in Dallas. Prior to that he worked at Simon David when they opened in Dallas in1989 (there’s an Alamo Drafthouse there now). Also I just read there was a Wyatt Food Store inRichardson Heights Shopping Center in the 1950s.

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  7. rosi

    October 11, 2022 at 11:15am

    My grandmother was a single mother in the Dallas of the 1930s. I’m researching to find out what were the grocery stores she shopped at. She did more than shop there, and
    that’s why I’m researching this topic. She went into business for herself during the Great Depression thanks to a couple of grocery stores in Dallas. That said, I’ll keep searching!

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