Over the years, there has been many, many places I've seen that Houston had and College Station-Bryan didn't. If there was any sort of chain in the College Station/Bryan area, then there was one in Houston too. There were exceptions of course, Albertsons had survived nearly a decade after the company pulled out of Houston, and AppleTree did the same. While College Station's Winn-Dixie only lasted sometime around the mid-1990s, Houston didn't even have any Winn-Dixie stores.
This also extends to restaurants. When this post was originally written in January 2020, I had mentioned in my post on Fazoli's that it no longer had any Houston-area locations, a result of closings trickling over the previous decade. Kettle was another example, with Kettle #138 at 2502 Texas Avenue South opening in 1983 as a complement to the Manor House Motor Inn. In better days, Kettle was based based out of Houston where most of its stores were located and had locations stretching from Arizona to Florida.
Before it ended in 2021 (with one post in 2023), there was a blog that was on my rotation called Broken Chains, which referred to former chain restaurants that have mostly died off, hence the term "broken chain" (as in chain restaurant). When I wrote the original post in January 2020 the restaurant was 24 hours (many diner-type operations were) but that ended in March 2020 for not just Kettle but hundreds of these diner restaurants and small chains (including Jim's there in the Central Texas area). While the Bryan Kettle soldiers on, in late 2022 it was announced the College Station Kettle would close for good after November 2022. In late May, the building (and its massive sign) was demolished for Salad and Go, which opened in October 2023, nearly a year after Kettle closed. However, after less than two years, Salad and Go closed when the chain shut down 41 Texas locations which included all of the Houston and San Antonio stores, leaving the site vacant once more.
To close out this post, someone on Google added an old picture from the early to mid-2000s. It seems that it was since removed, but I was smart this time and saved it.
UPDATE 10-04-2025: Previous updates archived as post was rewritten.
