Houston was once full of family-owned grocery stores. Henke & Pillot started all the way back in 1872. German immigrant Henry Henke opened what could be called the first modern grocery store in Houston, providing a city with goods and services they would usually have to travel down to Galveston to obtain.
It remained a powerful name in the local grocery industry until Kroger bought the company and slowly phased out the Henke & Pillot brand in the 1950s.
Weingarten’s, founded in 1901 had 104 stores across four states at its peak, though its home base was always Houston. As the 1980s rolled around, the Weingarten family sold their stores to focus on their real estate business…