980 University Drive East

Grub's space went through several incarnations, and may yet continue to do so (from The Eagle, 4/27/08)
We've covered the restaurants around the fountain (except for Blue Baker/Atami, which are still their charter tenants from almost twenty years ago)—Abuelo's Mexican Food Embassy (now Casa Mangiare), the building that once held Veritas Wine & Bistro, Ben & Jerry's, and It's a Grind (and their successor restaurants), and what was, until recently, Razzoo's Cajun Cafe...plus, the stand-alone restaurant east of it, the old TGI Friday's. Beyond that is 980 University Drive East.

It featured four spaces, with 980A (instead of 100), suite 200, suite 300, and suite 400, and as of 2025 there are two vacant spaces, though most of them have operated in the last twenty years. The first space was originally home to Pei Wei Asian Diner, a fast-casual concept owned by P.F. Chang's China Bistro, operating from late 2005 to August 2019 (Pei Wei closed a bunch of restaurants during this time, likely stemming from being spun off from P.F. Chang's). In late 2021, The Cookshack, a restaurant serving Nashville hot chicken, opened, but it too closed as of November 2025 (seems the whole chain imploded, at least partially). Suite 200 has SportClips (the first local location) since around 2005, nothing dramatic there, suite 300 had Jamba Juice, which closed in November 2023 (I don't think it ever got the new "Jamba" branding).¹ It is still vacant to my knowledge. Suite 400 opened in 2007 (maybe early 2008) as Eccell Steakhouse, a new concept by Eccell Group, before it closed in 2010 and became Bodega Coast, a seafood restaurant, trading in the Cafe Eccell-inspired menu for the nearby La Bodega, and that lasted six months before another concept, Knockouts Grill House (I think it was a sports bar) came. By January 2012 it was closed and a few months later, Grub Burger Bar opened. Grub Burger Bar was a relatively successful concept and opened a number of locations all the way to the East Coast, and by the time it was acquired by Hopdoddy in 2018, had 18 locations (several had closed in 2020). Grub doesn't exist as a chain anymore...Hopdoddy rebranded them and probably would've done the same here as it already had a location at Century Square about a mile or so to the west.

What does the future hold for this site? Prognosis isn't looking good, it's 20+ years old, half-vacant, and Hopdoddy is probably letting Grub Burger Bar run down its lease². This may end up being the first true redeveloped building on the strip, even if many of the restaurants in the center are second-generation.

1. Jamba Juice wasn't new to the area, not exactly. In 1999, they purchased the Zuka Juice chain, which had two locations, one of them part of the Exxon center at Welsh and FM 2818, the other near Best Buy and Office Depot, but these closed in 2001.
2. The other possibility is that it's Century Square they don't want to renew on, and will close down Grub for a new Hopdoddy location. Either way, Grub's future is looking dim.

Good Bull BBQ

You can see the remnants of where an awning once hung, last seen in the "Cocina" days. (Picture by author, 8/21)
When I did the post on the late Southgate Subway that closed after nearly 30 years, you could see the doors to Good Bull BBQ to the right of it. Unlike Subway, this spot (326 George Bush Drive, née 326 Jersey) has been a revolving door of restaurants over the years, but going back further hasn't always been restaurants.

The oldest record I can find is 1969 with the location being the Southside Barber Shop "under new management", with a legacy of hair cutting continuing into the early 1980s.

In 1978, it was the Mop Shop, and mentioned in the paper because someone had stolen their barber pole. It was here until the very early 1980s.

"How About Lurl's" was here in 1982-1983 according to tax records (a second location of a hair styling shop in Bryan). This is the last known hair cutting place at the spot before it transitioned to restaurant space.

In the spring of 1984, a new pizzeria called DoubleDave's Pizzaworks opened. A second location on Northgate soon followed. By the time DoubleDave's closed this particular location around 2000 (presumably relocating to Rock Prairie Road), DoubleDave's wasn't quite a small one-location operation anymore. DoubleDave's long stay at this storefront was the longest time that any single restaurant operated here and survived the 1990s name change to George Bush Drive.

Mi Cocina Restaurant (also known as Mi Cocina II, as their first restaurant was located in Bryan) opened in 2000 and was very popular for a time; by 2006 it had opened two additional locations in College Station. Unfortunately, at some point, it was sued by a similarly-named restaurant (which had no locations in College Station) and the restaurants became Polly's Cocina (except the original Bryan location, which went to different ownership). After the spring 2011 semester, the now-named Polly's Cocina Restaurant closed.

Coco Loco, which opened in summer 2011, I never actually went to, but I do remember my dad bringing home some leftover breakfast items including bacon and tortillas due to some work-related early morning meetings there, but in 2013 beef contaminated with the rare E. coli strain O157:H7 was undercooked and sent two young boys to the hospital. The restaurant was shut down by the health department for investigation and clean-up (and of course, the local news media followed it closely). During this saga, a health department official ate a taco at a televised press conference to demonstrate that the restaurant was safe to eat at, but that put off friends and families of the victims (especially as the family in question was facing a huge financial burden in hospital bills), and was forced to apologize. It would not have made much of a difference; the idea was to not throw Coco Loco under the bus, but it ended up closing in 2014.

La Botana moved in after Coco Loco's demise. This second location of a Bryan-based restaurant (still in operation as of this writing) opened in early 2015 but closed in 2017.

Good Bull BBQ opened in fall 2017 and closed in May 2021. Both TexAgs and Yelp attribute management issues to its closure. However, as of this writing, new management has reopened the restaurant.

Brazos CAD groups it with the same lot where Subway is, and therefore, like that building, I'll put that this building was built in the 1940s until new proof shows otherwise.

UPDATE 11-09-2021: The Good Bull BBQ revival ended up lasting just less than two months. Not too long after Good Bull BBQ reopened, their walk-in cooler failed, and the new owner did not fix it (allegedly believing it was the landlord's duty), leaving town soon after. Have the days of restaurants at 326 George Bush come to an end?
UPDATE 02-10-2024: In 2022 it became part of "FNL Nutrition", which didn't long and occupied the address of the former Subway next door.

Briarcrest AppleTree

Village Foods back in the AppleTree days. (Picture from Holcombe of Hidalgo, used with permission)
In the late 1980s the Houston Division of California-based Safeway Stores began planning a new larger, store to replace store #720 at Briarcrest and East 29th Street (located catty-corner to it). Less than six months before the store opened, however, it was announced that the Houston Division of Safeway was spun off as a new company (officially management-led but in reality highly leveraged) licensing the Safeway name and products. It was under this arrangement that Safeway #1193 (1760 Briarcrest) opened in November 1988. Less than a year later, it was renamed as AppleTree, becoming one of the largest and best-looking stores in the chain at 55,000 square feet (it seems it was based after the "Food Emporium" prototype, based after a similar Safeway at 2300 Gessner in Houston).

The new AppleTree chain's issues with debt, the unions, outdated stores, and the lack of financial stability (Safeway held most of the real estate) caused the new company to suddenly face death, just five years after the opening of the new supermarket the whole chain was being dismantled and looking for buyers.

The Bryan-College Station stores were unusual in that they were the last six stores remaining and operated as an independent supermarket chain. By 2003, that was knocked down to just three stores. In 2008, with the Culpepper Plaza store long since closed as well as an abortive attempt at a new store in Spring¹, the store was sold to its landlord Jim Lewis². Once again it would keep the name it had before before renaming officially to Village Foods in spring 2009. The store was also kept open with city benefits, with the City of Bryan promising a 50% sales tax rebate if Lewis employed a minimum of 30 employees.

Under Village Foods, interior upgrades were made as per agreement (the c. 1988 big glossy photographs of food were replaced with Benjamin Knox paintings, with other upgrades happening during the store's lifespan). New gluten-free items and organics were added to differentiate it from H-E-B and Kroger, but that created a problem with long-time customers, believing that it might be too "fancy" and upmarket for regular shopping, while creating a disappointment for everyone else. (Village Foods didn't have a bulk section) and mostly relied on the "local" store schtick (complete with all the problems of a "local" store from higher prices to nepotism hires³). Despite trying to improve some of its features, after the collapse of Stover Boys in 2011, Charles Stover was brought on to manage the luncheon and deli area, which was merged into "Stover Bros. Café".

I only went to the pre-Stover deli once—it originally offered "Blue Plate Specials", which were things like lasagna, but Stover soon expanded the menu to include gourmet hamburgers and fries (carryovers from Stover Boys) but unfortunately wasn't able to use/brand everything due to complications from the Stover Boys bankruptcy. Stover changed some things in the deli, including vastly expanding the deli meats and cheeses to the standards of other supermarkets (I remember the part that originally faced the front of the store, which now featured Boar's Head deli meats, originally had things like chips, including a brand of tortilla chip I enjoyed). While much of the traffic from Stover Boys was gone except for a small band of loyalists, Stover Brothers eventually built up a new following, enough to talk about expanding the seating (which never happened). Stover Brothers eventually deteriorated over time, by 2013 a number of items had been discontinued, such as a milkshake made with homemade Mexican vanilla ice cream (replaced with stock Blue Bell) and a great pastry called the "White Trash Donut" (later rebranded to "Southern Fried Doughnut"), basically a beignet with tres leches sauce (and I think vanilla sauce as well). Despite Stover's departed presence after a few years, many items remained permanently changed, like the potato salad. (Possibly the rotisserie chicken as well--unlike the greasy mess of other roti chicken, it was a rich recipe that involved a citrus/garlic marinade)⁴. In 2013 there was even a return of Hebert's Cajun Food, having been evicted of their shack at University Square, and briefly operated out of the "Southern Comfort Road Trip" food truck Village Foods had.

Despite the City's subsidies and Lewis' own subsidies (reducing Village Foods' rent by a third by 2015)⁵ the store was a loser⁶ and Village Foods was closed permanently in February 2016. Over 2016, the building was slightly altered, including removing the peaked roof for what would be the Urban Air Trampoline Park, but also adding ALDI to the eastern third of the ~50,000 square feet building (on the left side if you were looking at it head-on), though it completely gutted the building, down to removing even the concrete floor. The only thing really left is the columns, and despite ALDI's fairly bare-bones nature, it is much cheaper and much nicer than Village Foods ever was. Urban Air opened over a year later in January 2018 with the new 1758 address and ironically retained more of AppleTree's architecture. I took a look into Urban Air's re-use of the upper level of AppleTree, which used to have restrooms (nominally for employee use, but was often used by customers; the ground-floor restrooms were much smaller), a break room, and offices, but it was completely gutted. There was a new staircase where the restrooms were.

<sup>1. See Houston Historic Retail.
2. There were other stores in the center including Pro-Cuts (later "Brazos Cuts" and currently "Level Up Barber Salon") at 1770 Briarcrest, Clinica Hispana (there in 2013; 3410 East 29th Street), Austin Driving School (3412), and Molly Maid (3414).
3. I held off on a LONG time about this but there were nepo hires who were wildly unqualified for the job they were given.
4. I have no idea if Safeway was doing rotisserie chicken in the late 1980s, and what was the program before. Was it a carryover from an AppleTree initiative from the early 1990s? Was it put in under Kubicek's ownership? Who knows!
5. I think this was mentioned on TexAgs as to why the store was closed and leased to ALDI instead.
6. There were a variety of factors working against the store but the biggest hit post-sale was the construction on Briarcrest in 2012-2013 that added medians but also permanently sealed their main entrance off of the road.</sup>

UPDATE 03-23-2025: The last update was in 2019 but it was revamped again with less emphasis on Village Foods itself (despite being closed by 2019 the post STILL read a bit like an advertisement) and more as the history as a whole. There's a few pictures more of VF as AppleTree from Holcombe of Hidalgo as seen here (for instance); the forest green color was AppleTree's efforts. You can also see another page with some Village Foods pictures I took in the early 2010s with (mostly) my old cellphone camera here. Removed [2010s], added [29th street], [barber], [retail].

UPDATE 06-09-2025: Pro-Cuts opened in January 1990 per newspaper.