56 replies to this topic

[Giraffe]

There used to be two Buddies grocery stores in southwest FW that I remember. One was on the north end of the shopping center on the southwest corner of Loop 820 and Trail Lake Drive; during the 1970s there was a Kragens Auto Parts store in the same shopping center and there was a stand-alone Kentucky Fried Chicken in the parking lot, behind a gas station. (Today that KFC is long gone and a Wendy's now occupies that space.) My mom used to get her hair done in a beauty parlor between Buddies and the Mott's 5-and-10. When Buddies closed, the building went through several iterations; during the early 1980s it was a Show Biz Pizza parlor, complete with dozens of arcade games, animatronic animal musicians, Skee Ball alleys, etc.; then when Show Biz closed, it became an antique store. There may have been a fire in there; I can't remember for sure. Eventually that entire end of the shopping center was lasered off and demolished. Today a CVS pharmacy stands on the site (used to be Eckard's, and they always built their own buildings.) The rest of the shopping center is still going. (There is a very steep hill behind that shopping center, sometimes called "the lost block of Woodway," and if you look up from that street to the back of the shopping center you can probably still see grafitti painted on that huge concrete wall that goes back to the 1960s.)
The other Buddies was at McCart and Loop 820. When I was a kid my father built a motorized go-cart from scratch and we usually stopped by the hardware store inside that Buddies every Sunday afternoon after leaving South Hills Baptist Church (which has since relocated to another part of town, too) to shop for parts. Dad built the go-cart with a wooden frame and used the engine from a gas-powered lawn edger, and used a belt-drive link to transfer the power from the engine to the wheels. It took us several trips to the hardware store to find just the right fan belt that wasn't too loose or too tight. In fact, even now I can still remember that belt size: 4L310. That hardware store had dozens of fan belts hanging from hooks up near the ceiling, and the clerk would pick one with a long, hooked pole. While the building is still there on McCart, it hasn't been a grocery store in decades; today it's a very, very cut-rate thrift shop. There used to be a Mitchell's next door, where you could buy your Boy Scout uniforms as well as other clothing.
Just last week I was visiting my folks and Dad remembers the Blue Laws at that Buddies -- certain parts of the store would be blocked off because it was illegal to buy/sell certain things on Sundays.
I think the Buddies stores got absorbed by Winn-Dixie, which pulled out of North Texas a few years ago.

[801hme]

The original Buddies was the one on North Main and NE 28th (I think), and after Winn/Dixie took them over, it was the only one allowed to retain the "Buddies" name...The Oakland Buddies was long gone by then, but the Winn/Dixie at Meadowbrook and Handley might have been a Buddies originally...seems like the adjacent hardware store had something to do with Buddies, but I may be wrong.

Oh my gosh...Mitchell's...I hadn't thought of those stores in years...

[JRL1972]

The orginal Buddies was actually located at Main and Long. There was another one at 28th and Jacksboro Highway.

[hipolyte]

Another Buddies, and the (later) companion 'Handyman Hardware' was at the intersection of Belknap, Midway, and NE 28th street. It is now an oriental grocer, Nguyen Loi.

[John T Roberts]

I remember the Buddie's stores that Giraffe has mentioned in Southwest Fort Worth. There were also several others on the South Side. One was located at 3628 McCart and it is now a Parole Office. Another was located in the shopping center at McCart and West Berry, but that has now been demolished for a TCU Parking Lot. Another one was built after the old Parkway Theater was demolished at the end of Park Place on 8th Avenue in the 1960's. It later became a Carnival Food Store and an adjacent freestanding building was built as a Thrifty/Revco/Eckerd Drug Store. Carnival has closed and the $1.00 store at the old drug store building is also closed. This leaves that entire center vacant. Buddie's was also one of the original tenants of Seminary South Shopping Center. After Winn-Dixie closed the store to build a larger one on 8th Avenue, Fiesta took over the Seminary South location. When Winn-Dixie vacated North Texas, the newer store on 8th Avenue, also became a Fiesta. Now, Fiesta is building a large superstore on the west parking lot of La Gran Plaza de Fort Worth (formerly Fort Worth Town Center & Seminary South). Soon the old Buddie's there will become vacant.

[Ghost Writer in Disguise]

Still standing is the one inside the Camp Bowie/Camp Bowie West split. A Big Lots occupies the end that was once the hardware store.

[bailey]

The Buddies in Wedgwood on Trail Lake Drive was actually the first full service grocer in Wedgwood. It opened around 1960. Prior to that, those living in the Wedgwood area had to shop in Westcliff. If you remember the old Buddies stores, they could not sell many items in the hardware portions on Sunday because of the blue laws. They would cover up the shelves with sheets on Sunday for those items they could not sell

Most probably don't remember that many of the Buddies stores were previously A. L. Davis Foodstores. Buddies bought them out and then built new stores on many of the locations. They would build the new stores on the lots behind the existing store and then tear the old one down when the new store was completed. That way they were never out of business but a few days. The Buddies on 8th Avenue and McCart were built like that.

[John T Roberts]

I was going to bring up the point about Buddies purchase of A. L. Davis Food Stores and about the locations on 8th Avenue and McCart, but I forgot to put it in my post.

[bailey]

The old A.L. Davis stores were just that, really old. I remember shopping there and how really old and run down they were.

Speaking of old grocers, one of the oldest stores I remember was the Rogers Food store located where Granbury Road dead ends into McCart. That old building is still there today as a glass company I believe. It was a small store but representative of the type of grocery store around Fort Worth before the mega grocers came in. The other local chain about that time was the Worth Food Marts which were located around the city. I remember specifically the two located in Westcliff and South Hills shopping centers that we shopped at in the mid 1950's.

[cajunmike]

The Blue Law you could buy a hammer on Sunday but not a baby bottle and other items that made no sense. Some of the older Buddies stores had the Handyman Hardware stores on one end. We would go in the one in Haltom City and buy rabbit food and seeds. I also remember my mother writing a check on a "bank draft" that the store had. You filled it out and sent it to the bank. I also noticed the in one of the post the old Kragens auto supply, we also had the Kissenger auto supply house.

[cbellomy]

When I was a kid growing up on Lake Worth, we did our grocery shopping at the Buddies on White Settlement Road at Cherry Lane. The strip center it was part of still stands, but I think part of the old Buddies was demolished.

I used to love going to the Ben Franklin dime store next door. Memories...

[Roger_H]

There was also a Buddies on Mansfield Highway. I remember because as a kid the job of "sackboy" at Buddies was highly sought after.

Heading west on I-20 Markham Ranch Road is named for Buddy Markham who owned (and still may own) a ranch out there.

[JBB]

Just to throw in another location: There was a Buddie's on Everman Pkwy. in Everman when I was growing up. It became a Winn Dixie at some point in the '80's and then closed in the early '90's (sometime after 1992). It was later occupied by a bingo hall and Dollar General and the entire building was destroyed in a fire in 2006. The building was demolished and DG built a new store just to east of the destroyed store.

[DrkLts]

^^^ I grew up in Everman too. I miss the ol' Buddies store. I remember after the Winn Dixie takeover, my parents still kept saying "We gotta go to Buddies to get some groceries" lol I think just before it turned into a Bingo/Dollar General, it briefly was a David's Supermarket. I dunno if that was a chain, but it didnt last.

[Dr Quest]

I grew up in Lakeside so the Buddies we went to was in Lake Worth on Jacksboro Hwy. To this day I still call paper grocery store bags "buddie sacks"

[Kepi]

Here is a list of Fort Worth Buddies Supermarkets from the 1967 Fort Worth City Directory. The list does not include any stores in other cities, such as Lake Worth or Haltom City, as those cities do not appear in the Fort Worth directory.

Store# - Address
1 - 3220 N Main St
3 - 6900 Camp Bowie Blvd
4 - 3701 E Rosedale St
5 - 1208 E Berry St
7 - 5537 James Ave
10 - 4208 Miller Rd
11 - 560 Seminary South Shopping Center
14 - 6546 Meadowbrook Dr
15 - 3320 Mansfield Rd
16 - 5012 Trail Lake Dr
31 - 3300 Camp Bowie Blvd
38 - 3628 McCart Ave
45 - 2000 N Riverside Dr
49 - 4515 Camp Bowie Blvd
50 - 1719 8th Ave
54 - 2508 W Berry St

Here is Google Map with all of the store locations marked: 1967 Fort Worth Buddies Supermarkets

If you click on the Google Street View, you can see what is currently at those sites.

Later, I will list the Worth Food Marts from the same directory and create a Google Map for them as well.

[Dismuke]

A good many of those locations remained in operation as Winn Dixie stores well into the 1990s.

I remember one of the things that struck me most - and in a negative way - about Fort Worth when I first moved here from Dallas County in 1990 was how most of the grocery stores consisted of rinky-dink run down Winn Dixie stores. Being in Fort Worth back then was sort of like being in a time warp when compared with Dallas. In some respects this was rather neat and part of the city's charm. In other respects it was not as charming. The Winn Dixie stores were not only outdated and offered limited selection, they were also expensive. It wasn't until a year or so later that they finally switched to the low price format one would expect for a store in obsolete facilities. In Dallas I had been used to shopping at Albertsons which had large modern stores and, in those days, the lowest prices in town. Paying more to shop at a crappy store did not go over well with me. At the time, however, there were no Albertsons locations at all in Fort Worth. The only decent (at least by the standards of the time) supermarket in my part of town was the Tom Thumb on Camp Bowie - and in those days, Tom Thumb was the most expensive store in town. I used to drive all the way to the Kroger on South Hulen to shop for groceries because it was the closest modern-sized store that had semi-reasonable prices.

More and better shopping options is one way that Fort Worth has changed vastly for the better. Having Central Market nearby is VERY nice. And the nearby SuperTarget has much better prices and selection than any supermarket we had in Fort Worth in the early 1990s - and the prices at the Super Walmart are even lower. Now if they would just build a Frys and a MicroCenter here - having to drive to Arlington or Richardson to shop at them is not a nice thing.

[Roger_H]

^^^ I grew up in Everman too. I miss the ol' Buddies store. I remember after the Winn Dixie takeover, my parents still kept saying "We gotta go to Buddies to get some groceries" lol I think just before it turned into a Bingo/Dollar General, it briefly was a David's Supermarket. I dunno if that was a chain, but it didnt last.

David's Supermarket is a chain that is still in business. They operate grocery stores in towns that are too small for the regular supermarkets. So far as I know, that Everman location was their one and only venture into Tarrant County.

[mbdalton1]

We moved to Mansfield in the mid-70s and the big grocery store here at the time was Buddies. I remember going there with Mom for groceries. I can still remember the two little owls that were part of their logo. I, too, remember the hardware portion of the store on the left side. I know you could enter it from inside Buddies but it must have had its own front door as well.

One time I saved up about 50 pennies and while Mom was shopping I fed the pennies into the gumball machine at the front of the store. That was 50 gumballs! After Mom found out what I had done, she made me throw them all away. They were not 'sugar-free'. I was bummed. That memory sticks with me to this day! I also remember buying some Foster Grant sunglasses there a few years later!

Buddies is now long gone. It turned into Winn-Dixie at some point, which then moved to a new location in the growing Walnut Creek addition of town, near the country club. The old Buddies building would eventually be demolished and the new City Hall stands on the grounds where it used to be. (Buddies was in a strip retail center that included Gibson's Department Store, Eckerd Drugs, and a few other little shops. All demolished for City Hall.)

Ahhh, the memories of the 70s.

:0) mary bess

[Giraffe]

[quote name='mbdalton1' date='Apr 26 2008, 02:54 PM' post='45849']
We moved to Mansfield in the mid-70s and the big grocery store here at the time was Buddies. I remember going there with Mom for groceries. I can still remember the two little owls that were part of their logo. I, too, remember the hardware portion of the store on the left side. I know you could enter it from inside Buddies but it must have had its own front door as well.

GEEZ, I forgot about the owls!!! Haha!!! It's funny what eventually comes back to you. For some mysterious reason, earlier this week a little jingle popped into my head after a 25+ year dormancy: "The beef people at Buddies..."




One time I saved up about 50 pennies and while Mom was shopping I fed the pennies into the gumball machine at the front of the store. That was 50 gumballs! After Mom found out what I had done, she made me throw them all away. They were not 'sugar-free'. I was bummed. That memory sticks with me to this day! I also remember buying some Foster Grant sunglasses there a few years later!

Heck, my mother LOVED grape gumballs, but we usually got them from the 7-Eleven. They were available individually wrapped on the candy rack and normally cost 2 cents apiece (this was the mid-1970s, folks). When they were on sale for half price, my mom would stock up on them. If she knew one or more of her kids would be going to 7-Eleven for a Slurpee or something, she'd toss us a dollar bill and tell us to bring back a sack. Mom kept those grape gumballs in the same pull-out drawer where she kept her S&H Green Stamps. This drawer was also in the same kitchen counter as the dishwasher, and at certain times of the evening when we'd all be watching TV, the heat from the dishwasher would make those gumballs juuuust chewy enough to make 'em really, really good! They never melted, but they were much easier to chew then. (Before then, they'd just be jawbreakers.)

Slightly Off-Topic, But I'm Telling You Anyway: In the mid-1970s my brother was a big fan of Spider-Man and collected a lot of the Marvel comic books. At some point 7-Eleven had a promotion wherein you'd buy a large Slurpee and you'd get a collectible plastic cup with one of the Marvel characters on it. My brother wanted a Spider-Man Slurpee cup! This was back when the Slurpee machines were behind the counter, and only the clerk could run it. Therefore, the clerk wasn't about to go riffling through a stack of collectible cups to get to the one you wanted; nope, the clerk just pulled out whatever cup was at the bottom of the pile, and if you didn't like it, tough buns. My brother went through two solid weeks of buying a large Slurpee every day on his way home from Tarrant County Junior College, and he amassed quite a collection of cups featuring the Incredible Hulk, the Mighty Thor, and the Fantastic Four before he finally got his Holy Grail! (I think that burned him out on Slurpees for a solid decade.)

[cbellomy]

Eckerd's, or its local predecessor: Ward's Cut-Rate Drug?

Businesses of prominence in my childhood growing up on Lake Worth:

- Buddies at the corner of White Settlement and Cherry Lane
- Ben Franklin 5 & 10 in the same shopping center
- Mitchell's, catty-corner to the Buddies
- Myer's on Highway 80
- Gibson's in the same shopping center on Highway 80
- Security State Bank in River Oaks (the original location north of SH 183)
- Ward's at 199 & 183
- Underwood's BBQ on 183 in River Oaks
- Crow's Liquor at the confluence of White Settlement and Clifford, back when there was NOTHING out there. The line of cars back to dry White Settlement could get quite impressive!
- Papa's Pizza on Highway 80
- Later, Pie R Squared on Highway 80
- Crystal's Pizza, of course

I guess I'll stop there.

[Dr Quest]

E
- Later, Pie R Squared on Highway 80


I guess I'll stop there.

I haven't thought of Pie R Squared in at least 30 years but I remember it like it was yesterday, in the mid 80's it was a Fajita Junction....and wasn't it a nudie bar before it was eventually torn down?

There was a Mott 5 & 10 in Ridglea, I would guess about where Tom Thumb is now where I got my first pair of PF Flyers.

[Birdland in Handley]

The Buddies at Seminary South sure had good fudgy pecany Brownies

[empty]

There were at least two Buddie's stores in the HEB area in the late sixties. One was in Hurst on the northeast corner of Pipeline Rd. and Precinct Line Rd. It was a new construction at the time. I think the other one was one of the last stores built under the Buddie's name, located on the northwest corner of Brown Trail and Bedford-Euless Rd. in Bedford, just south of Airport Freeway and Bell High School.

I found a couple of photos of the Bedford store in a 1970 Bell yearbook--my scanner is on the fritz so I can't post right now but I will as soon as I can.

Shopping in the Hurst store one day in the early 70's put me off Buddie's for good and kept me away from Winn-Dixie for a long time. In the produce section, I found pints of strawberries in those little green plastic baskets for a really good price. I picked up a basket, admired the pretty berries on the top--and then turned it over to examine the bottom. The bottom of the basket was solid mold. I put that basket down, tried another--more mold. It was the same for four more baskets. I ended up turning several of the baskets upside down, left the store and didn't go back until years after it had changed hands.

It's always sad to see an local institution go bad.

The Bedford store is currently (at least partially) a Rent-a-Center and the Hurst store is empty except for a Blockbuster occupying a corner of the building.

[The Haltom City Kid]

Mmmm, Buddies chopped BBQ for Sunday lunch, good stuff!

[Cranky Greg]

My family moved to Dalworthington Gardens in 1970. There was a Buddies grocery store on the southeast corner of Bowen and Park Row in Arlington. At the time, before I-20 and all that, it was the closest grocery store to south Arlington....at least around the Dalworthington Gardens area. Like other Buddies, it later became a Winn Dixie. I am not sure what is there now - since I live in California and haven't been back to Fort Worth in about 5 years.

I remember the Beef People at Buddies!!

[cajunmike]

Someone posted about the chopped BBQ sandwiches at Buddies. When I worked there as a teenager, I would go to the deli and get the chopped BBQ and then over to the bakery for the fresh brownies!........mmmmmmmmm

[LocalYokel]

One of the items we kids particularly liked was the "Texas Size Donut" at the Buddie's bakery. As I recall you could get them at both the Crowley and Burleson stores. They were about the same diameter as a paper plate and the bakers would pile on powdered sugar or chocolate glaze if you wanted. Outstanding!

They also had the routine where they would give a young kid a free cookie. Wonder if any of the grocery stores still do that?

[Giraffe]

There were at least two Buddie's stores in the HEB area in the late sixties. One was in Hurst on the northeast corner of Pipeline Rd. and Precinct Line Rd. It was a new construction at the time. The Hurst store is empty except for a Blockbuster occupying a corner of the building.

Last Saturday I was in Hurst and I accidentally stumbled upon this old Buddies building. It is now empty (the topmost sign indicates it was an office furniture store) and up for sale. From across the parking lot I was just barely able to make out the individual letters "B U D D I E S" painted over with white paint, on the overhead marquee. Next door to this is a bowling alley and a skating rink.

[stevee]

We shopped at the Hurst Buddies in the 60's at Harrison Ln. and Pipeline Rd. I remember once around 1962 or '63 my dad taking me there while Wonderbread? I think it was or maybe Ms. Bairds bread, anyway they were running a promotion and had this very tall gentleman dressed in a suit and a hat passing out little loaves of bread, little miniature loaves. There was a 5&10 store next to Buddies and I remember buying multi-colored rabbits foot key chains and seeing baby alligators for sale at the checkout. They were kept in a tray with water and no lid.

[wrccpa]

It seems that there was a Buddies on the corner of Bridge St. and Oakland, this would be in the mid 70's.

[John T Roberts]

Yes, there was a Buddie's at Bridge and Oakland. It was remodeled into the current Bally's Total Fitness in the early 1980's.

[lcbrownz]

In the spring of1968, I worked weekends the Fort Worth Star-Telegram mail room. I cleared between $17 ana $22 a week. With that money, I bought a 1954 Nash Rambler stationwagon. I didn't like the color of the car so I went to the Buddie's hardware store on E. Rosedale and purchased cans of Krylon spray paint and spray painted my car. Since I didn't make much money, I could only afford to buy 4 cans of spray paint a week. It took me 4 weeks to finish the job.

There used to be two Buddies grocery stores in southwest FW that I remember. One was on the north end of the shopping center on the southwest corner of Loop 820 and Trail Lake Drive; during the 1970s there was a Kragens Auto Parts store in the same shopping center and there was a stand-alone Kentucky Fried Chicken in the parking lot, behind a gas station. (Today that KFC is long gone and a Wendy's now occupies that space.) My mom used to get her hair done in a beauty parlor between Buddies and the Mott's 5-and-10. When Buddies closed, the building went through several iterations; during the early 1980s it was a Show Biz Pizza parlor, complete with dozens of arcade games, animatronic animal musicians, Skee Ball alleys, etc.; then when Show Biz closed, it became an antique store. There may have been a fire in there; I can't remember for sure. Eventually that entire end of the shopping center was lasered off and demolished. Today a CVS pharmacy stands on the site (used to be Eckard's, and they always built their own buildings.) The rest of the shopping center is still going. (There is a very steep hill behind that shopping center, sometimes called "the lost block of Woodway," and if you look up from that street to the back of the shopping center you can probably still see grafitti painted on that huge concrete wall that goes back to the 1960s.)
The other Buddies was at McCart and Loop 820. When I was a kid my father built a motorized go-cart from scratch and we usually stopped by the hardware store inside that Buddies every Sunday afternoon after leaving South Hills Baptist Church (which has since relocated to another part of town, too) to shop for parts. Dad built the go-cart with a wooden frame and used the engine from a gas-powered lawn edger, and used a belt-drive link to transfer the power from the engine to the wheels. It took us several trips to the hardware store to find just the right fan belt that wasn't too loose or too tight. In fact, even now I can still remember that belt size: 4L310. That hardware store had dozens of fan belts hanging from hooks up near the ceiling, and the clerk would pick one with a long, hooked pole. While the building is still there on McCart, it hasn't been a grocery store in decades; today it's a very, very cut-rate thrift shop. There used to be a Mitchell's next door, where you could buy your Boy Scout uniforms as well as other clothing.
Just last week I was visiting my folks and Dad remembers the Blue Laws at that Buddies -- certain parts of the store would be blocked off because it was illegal to buy/sell certain things on Sundays.
I think the Buddies stores got absorbed by Winn-Dixie, which pulled out of North Texas a few years ago.

[jefffwd]

Here is the Hurst Buddie's today. You can still see the Buddie's name under the Ofco signage.

[Cowtown Mike]

John,

Your right about the Buddies at Bridge and Oakland. I worked there in 1966 as a 15 year old in the produce department.

[Giraffe]

One of the co-founders of Buddies grocery stores passed away this week. You can read about it here:


http://www.star-tele...of-buddies.html

[Cowtown Mike]

I remember having to go down to South Main street in 1966 as a 15 year old kid to take a polygraph test to work at a Buddies. I was just 15 and they working going to put me in the produce dept. I worked at the Buddies in White Lake Hills on Oakland Blvd. for about 1 year.

[researchfrog]

From 1998-2001, I worked at Winn-Dixie in their accounting department. Most of my coworkers had been with the company since Kimbell's owned it or had moved to Fort Worth when Winn-Dixie took over in the 1970s. From what I was told or what I read in old documents, there were approximately 155 Buddies stores in Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico when Winn-Dixie bought out Kimbell's. Buddies (and later Winn-Dixie) were primarily a Tarrant County grocery store. Minyard's ruled the roost in Dallas. Personally, I always felt that W-D missed the growth in Fort Worth and tried to force too many stores into the Dallas suburbs. For example, there were no Winn-Dixies on Hulen, at Cityview, or near TCU, yet they opened stores in Garland and Mesquite.

The Northside Buddies kept the name so that W-D would not lose the trademark.

[Dismuke]

Personally, I always felt that W-D missed the growth in Fort Worth and tried to force too many stores into the Dallas suburbs. For example, there were no Winn-Dixies on Hulen, at Cityview, or near TCU, yet they opened stores in Garland and Mesquite.

I know that Buddies used to have at least some presence on the Dallas side of the Metroplex prior to Winn-Dixie coming in. My parents tell me that when they first came to Dallas, grocery selection and prices were much, much better in the suburbs than they were in the area off Greenville Ave where my parents rented at the time. So they would drive to Garland where Buddies was one of the stores they shopped at. Buddies also had a hardware store right next to it.

The problem with the Dallas suburban stores that Winn-Dixie opened right after they took over from Buddies was that, even when brand new, they were small and old fashioned. Skaggs was building and Kroger, Safeway and Tom Thumb were just starting to convert over to either large grocery stores with a deli/bakery or into food/drug combos. It is possible that some of those new Dallas Winn-Dixie stores might have had a deli/bakery - but none of the ones I went into a kid did. They were just ordinary stores.

I remember that my mother enjoyed going into the one not too far from where we lived because the store was super clean and had very few customers. I always liked it because all of the items on the shelves were meticulously brought to the very edge of the shelf and neatly arranged - verses other stores where you would see gaps from where customers had depleted the stock. I was just a kid tagging along and not buying anything - so little things like that made an impression. But other than being very clean and uncluttered, there was nothing at all special about the store.

The other problem with Winn-Dixie in Dallas was that they were actually higher priced than competing stores. I remember a girl in my neighborhood getting a job as a checkout at Winn-Dixie and mentioning that her family wouldn't shop there because the prices at the larger and much more modern Kroger down the street were a lot better. And Winn-Dixie's high prices actually persisted through the early 1990s. When I first moved to Fort Worth I was thoroughly disgusted that most of the grocery stores here consisted of Buddies era Winn-Dixie stores that were not only dingy and outdated but were much more expensive than the Albertsons stores I shopped at in Dallas which were larger and had far more selection. (Unlike now, in those days Albertsons actually had low prices). That situation finally changed not long after I moved to Fort Worth when Winn-Dixie had a huge promotional campaign where they actually closed all stores down for a day to lower prices. After that, their prices became a lot more realistic given the age, small size and lack of amenities in their stores.

Winn-Dixie started out as and, with the reversal of its fortunes is once again, primarily a Southeastern grocery store chain. I have always wondered if that had something to do with it getting a very late start at updating its stores in this area.

Texans like large grocery stores. By the early 1980s, Winn-Dixie was the only national chain in the area that had not converted over to larger stores. On the other hand, if you traveled through the Southeast as late as the early '00s vast portions of the region were still dominated by small, old fashioned stores similar to those that became obsolete in the Metroplex in the 1970s.

In the early 1990s, another Southeastern grocer, Food Lion, came to the Metroplex in a big way with a huge distribution center and dozens of locations. And all of those locations looked just like the ones they built in the Southeast - very small, no drug store and limited selection. Not only that, the products they carried tended to reflect Southern rather than Texas tastes. For example, they devoted lots of shelf space to stocking cans of boiled peanuts which are not well-known here but very popular in the South. The whole venture flopped from the get go - even before a media hyped food safety scandal finished them off resulting in them completely withdrawing from Texas.

I tend to suspect that the top executives at Winn-Dixie were also much too late to realize the very significant cultural differences between the Southeast and Texas - especially when it comes to people's shopping habits.

I think they were able to hang on for much longer in Fort Worth simply because (for reasons I have never fully figured out) Fort Worth was somewhat stagnant economically for a number of decades and missed out on much of the explosive growth that Dallas saw during the 1970s and 1980s right at the same time that the national chains began converting to larger stores. The Dallas chains had more opportunities to open new stores in the exploding Dallas suburbs - and there was a certain amount of competition between them in terms of whose new stores were the nicest. Meanwhile, the Dallas areas chains tended to overlook Fort Worth as their was much more opportunity for them to invest their expansion capital into closer to home.

This allowed Winn-Dixie to continue to operate, largely unchallenged, its large number of legacy stores in well-established neighborhoods where it is more difficult to find suitable locations for competitors to move in. It was like the Fort Worth grocery market largely remained in a mid 1970s time warp. But in the early 1990s, Albertsons finally entered the Fort Worth market and they did so very aggressively, even building in established parts of town. It didn't take long at all for Albertsons to decisively knock Winn-Dixe out of number one in terms of Fort Worth market share. After that, the story of Winn-Dixie became one of store closings, decline and a desperate, too little too late attempt to open more modern stores.

The Northside Buddies kept the name so that W-D would not lose the trademark.

I have always been curious about that and wondered if it was perhaps for the reason that you mentioned.

There are a couple of Chevron stations in certain states that are branded "Standard" The logo and signage is the same - the only difference is the word that they spell out. The reason for it is that Chevron-Texaco owns the right to use the Standard Oil brand name in certain states - and if they fail to actively use it they will lose that right.

[gaspergou]

Personally, I always felt that W-D missed the growth in Fort Worth and tried to force too many stores into the Dallas suburbs. For example, there were no Winn-Dixies on Hulen, at Cityview, or near TCU, yet they opened stores in Garland and Mesquite.

I know that Buddies used to have at least some presence on the Dallas side of the Metroplex prior to Winn-Dixie coming in. My parents tell me that when they first came to Dallas, grocery selection and prices were much, much better in the suburbs than they were in the area off Greenville Ave where my parents rented at the time. So they would drive to Garland where Buddies was one of the stores they shopped at. Buddies also had a hardware store right next to it.

The problem with the Dallas suburban stores that Winn-Dixie opened right after they took over from Buddies was that, even when brand new, they were small and old fashioned. Skaggs was building and Kroger, Safeway and Tom Thumb were just starting to convert over to either large grocery stores with a deli/bakery or into food/drug combos. It is possible that some of those new Dallas Winn-Dixie stores might have had a deli/bakery - but none of the ones I went into a kid did. They were just ordinary stores.

I remember that my mother enjoyed going into the one not too far from where we lived because the store was super clean and had very few customers. I always liked it because all of the items on the shelves were meticulously brought to the very edge of the shelf and neatly arranged - verses other stores where you would see gaps from where customers had depleted the stock. I was just a kid tagging along and not buying anything - so little things like that made an impression. But other than being very clean and uncluttered, there was nothing at all special about the store.

The other problem with Winn-Dixie in Dallas was that they were actually higher priced than competing stores. I remember a girl in my neighborhood getting a job as a checkout at Winn-Dixie and mentioning that her family wouldn't shop there because the prices at the larger and much more modern Kroger down the street were a lot better. And Winn-Dixie's high prices actually persisted through the early 1990s. When I first moved to Fort Worth I was thoroughly disgusted that most of the grocery stores here consisted of Buddies era Winn-Dixie stores that were not only dingy and outdated but were much more expensive than the Albertsons stores I shopped at in Dallas which were larger and had far more selection. (Unlike now, in those days Albertsons actually had low prices). That situation finally changed not long after I moved to Fort Worth when Winn-Dixie had a huge promotional campaign where they actually closed all stores down for a day to lower prices. After that, their prices became a lot more realistic given the age, small size and lack of amenities in their stores.

Winn-Dixie started out as and, with the reversal of its fortunes is once again, primarily a Southeastern grocery store chain. I have always wondered if that had something to do with it getting a very late start at updating its stores in this area.

Texans like large grocery stores. By the early 1980s, Winn-Dixie was the only national chain in the area that had not converted over to larger stores. On the other hand, if you traveled through the Southeast as late as the early '00s vast portions of the region were still dominated by small, old fashioned stores similar to those that became obsolete in the Metroplex in the 1970s.

In the early 1990s, another Southeastern grocer, Food Lion, came to the Metroplex in a big way with a huge distribution center and dozens of locations. And all of those locations looked just like the ones they built in the Southeast - very small, no drug store and limited selection. Not only that, the products they carried tended to reflect Southern rather than Texas tastes. For example, they devoted lots of shelf space to stocking cans of boiled peanuts which are not well-known here but very popular in the South. The whole venture flopped from the get go - even before a media hyped food safety scandal finished them off resulting in them completely withdrawing from Texas.

I tend to suspect that the top executives at Winn-Dixie were also much too late to realize the very significant cultural differences between the Southeast and Texas - especially when it comes to people's shopping habits.

I think they were able to hang on for much longer in Fort Worth simply because (for reasons I have never fully figured out) Fort Worth was somewhat stagnant economically for a number of decades and missed out on much of the explosive growth that Dallas saw during the 1970s and 1980s right at the same time that the national chains began converting to larger stores. The Dallas chains had more opportunities to open new stores in the exploding Dallas suburbs - and there was a certain amount of competition between them in terms of whose new stores were the nicest. Meanwhile, the Dallas areas chains tended to overlook Fort Worth as their was much more opportunity for them to invest their expansion capital into closer to home.

This allowed Winn-Dixie to continue to operate, largely unchallenged, its large number of legacy stores in well-established neighborhoods where it is more difficult to find suitable locations for competitors to move in. It was like the Fort Worth grocery market largely remained in a mid 1970s time warp. But in the early 1990s, Albertsons finally entered the Fort Worth market and they did so very aggressively, even building in established parts of town. It didn't take long at all for Albertsons to decisively knock Winn-Dixe out of number one in terms of Fort Worth market share. After that, the story of Winn-Dixie became one of store closings, decline and a desperate, too little too late attempt to open more modern stores.

The Northside Buddies kept the name so that W-D would not lose the trademark.

I have always been curious about that and wondered if it was perhaps for the reason that you mentioned.

There are a couple of Chevron stations in certain states that are branded "Standard" The logo and signage is the same - the only difference is the word that they spell out. The reason for it is that Chevron-Texaco owns the right to use the Standard Oil brand name in certain states - and if they fail to actively use it they will lose that right.

[gaspergou]

Well, what about this childhood "joke"..."Your mouth is like Buddies....open day and night". Was this widespread?
Also, there were some sub-buddies. I worked at Village Food Store (#9?) at 120 Riverside drive in the late 60's) (still have my plastic pin-on name tag with a blue 59 cent stamped on the front with an old price stamper). It wasn't work, it was an adventure. We got our checks from Kimbells Foods. It became Stricks later. The Buddies on Belknap had a good stock of fishing supplies and behind the store you could pick up thousands of crickets under the floodlight. I was so sorry to see Buddies' go.

[Giraffe]

That "price stamper" you talked about... was it the type that looked like a hand-held ratchet, with a built-in ink stamp and thumb wheels you could adjust for setting the price? If so, my brother used one when he worked at Kroger back in 1973 or so. That device was called a "garvey." (Why, I don't know.) I was fascinated with those things as a little kid and my mother somehow got me a garvey of my very own! We got the ink pad inked at an office supply store and I spent a lot of happy times stamping prices on our canned goods at home.

[gaspergou]

That "price stamper" you talked about... was it the type that looked like a hand-held ratchet, with a built-in ink stamp and thumb wheels you could adjust for setting the price? If so, my brother used one when he worked at Kroger back in 1973 or so. That device was called a "garvey." (Why, I don't know.) I was fascinated with those things as a little kid and my mother somehow got me a garvey of my very own! We got the ink pad inked at an office supply store and I spent a lot of happy times stamping prices on our canned goods at home.

......It was....a Garvey and if you got too much ink you'd make a real mess....We always had ink on our aprons (the aprons I just now remembered..they were such an intregal part of the experience).....The bottle house and working bottles (returnable soda bottles), eating half a cantalope sitting on the lettuce in the walk in frige where we took our break in the summer, standing by and heaving various experimental products into the incenerator.....fun after work, I need to write it all down so I can read it after I cannot remember it.

[Cowtown Mike]

We lived by Buddies #2 in Haltom City when I was a teenager. Here are a few things I remember:

1. Bank drafts on the check out asile. Just enter the amount on and they will send it to your bank. No I.D. checked.
2. Buddies hardware store attahced. You could get rabbit food, other hardware etc.
3. Cashier had to look at every label and enter and punch in price. No scanning in those days.
4. Scottie stamps.
5. They carried your groceries out to the car. (Market Street Supermarkets does that today in Coppell)

Your correct on the label stamp. One of those stockers or managers would cut open a box and stamp those items in a flash.

[kksmith]

This is a very interesting topic, with great comments and additions by all. Dismukes, I think you are correct in your observations. I grew up in Fort Worth, but now live in Austin. I see the same thing that you mentioned happening to a Randall's near where we live. It is a nice store, but it is being used more like a convenience store than it was previously. The reason is that a Sam's Club and a Costco both opened nearby. As you said, at those stores people fill their baskets, but not so much at stores which used to be considered big, but now are not. There can be a vicious cycle too. Fewer shoppers, less turnover, then produce maybe not kept as fresh as before, and prices higher than at the warehouse stores.

I also enjoyed reading about the City Market in Westcliff Shopping Center. I remember when it was Wyatt's. I worked at the Worth Food Mart / Piggly Wiggly across the parking lot in the same shopping Center. It is amazing to think how small grocery stores were then compared with today. But Dismukes is correct -- small stores with a neighborhood feel can be successful. And of course so can stores which make grocery shopping more of an experience, like Whole Foods (which I also worked at, in Austin) and Central Market have done.

Thanks.

[txrob779]

Howdy folks, I'm Rob

 

In 1978 my first job was a sacker at Buddies on the corner of Hildale and Arkansas Ln. near Lake Arlington. Some great memories from the day there...32 oz. returnable bottles....stuff like that. Playin' Space Invaders at Granny and Grandad's around the corner, hanging out at "Feather Beach" at the Lake. I was reading this thread with anticipation but didn't see anyone mention the Arkansas Ln. Buddies. My grand parents lived on Pine St. @ Hurstview and was in that Buddies on Precient Line and Pipline alot too. I think lol...

[earlbutkus]

Still standing is the one inside the Camp Bowie/Camp Bowie West split. A Big Lots occupies the end that was once the hardware store.

As a kid in the 70's, I remember on occasion my family shopping at this store. I always liked going next door with my dad to the hardware store. I move to Ridglea West when I got married and often shopped there when it was Winn Dixie. Today it is a Goodwill store and Falla's store next to it.

[FW Kid]

I remember a Buddie's at the corner of Tierney road and East Rosedale. It was about four blocks from where I grew up.

[lcbrownz]

The original Buddies was the one on North Main and NE 28th (I think), and after Winn/Dixie took them over, it was the only one allowed to retain the "Buddies" name...The Oakland Buddies was long gone by then, but the Winn/Dixie at Meadowbrook and Handley might have been a Buddies originally...seems like the adjacent hardware store had something to do with Buddies, but I may be wrong.

Oh my gosh...Mitchell's...I hadn't thought of those stores in years...

There were originally only 4 Buddies Super Markets. I have a photo of one of them and another one when it burned down,

[lcbrownz]

The orginal Buddies was actually located at Main and Long. There was another one at 28th and Jacksboro Highway.

NW 28th St never crosses Jacksboro Hwy (popular misconception). It changes to Ephriham at Rosen Ave. Then change to River Oaks Blvd. NW 28th St. deadends one block past Sherman.