Culpepper Plaza's Burger King

Burger King is no more, it's a Chick-fil-A now. (Picture by author, 3/26)
Recently I re-did Culpepper Plaza's article and in the process eliminated 1719 Texas Avenue South, Chick-fil-A, also formerly the site of a Burger King.

Our area has never been much for Burger King. Its first attempt was at 3807 S. Texas Avenue in Bryan back in '69, but it closed in 1977. In comparison, McDonald's first landed in 1973 and it's been expanding since. By 1985, there were four restaurants in operation, and in that year, Burger King decided to try again with another restaurant in Culpepper Plaza. In the next twenty years, however, Burger King never built any other stores in the area, and although Burger King was a common treat on road trips, I don't remember eating here too often. I do remember the Pokémon promotion, which should've been huge if they hadn't been hit with a recall.1 I can't find exactly when it closed (I believe it was late 2006 but it might've been early 2007) there's a gap before the Texas Avenue and Deacon store opened, though it appears to line up with the East 29th and Villa Maria Road East store. Franchisee Shiloh Foods ultimately opened more two more Bryan stores (one of which folded within a few years of opening) before selling out in the early 2010s. I can't remember what the Burger King looked like, I do remember it had wood paneling on the outside but was not the common 2500 Model found in stores built in the 1990s. I've searched around in vain for a picture but you can just barely see it here without the modern paint (so a brown roof, and wood paneling on the right side). In spring 2008, Chick-fil-A replaced it, which at the time was a huge deal. There was only one stand-alone Chick-fil-A (in Bryan) and the only College Station stores was a popular outlet at Post Oak Mall and four "Express" locations on campus (most of which I've covered previously, Ag Café, the MSC, the Underground, and the Commons). Chick-fil-A is still there, of course, but in 2017 upgraded its drive-through (you couldn't park in front of the store anymore) before redoing it around 2023 to a new drive-through lane altogether.

1. I believe I still have my original toy, but it's still near-worthless on the used market.

The Diamond Shamrock at the End of Texas Avenue

This new April 2025 photo (by author) shows both Burger King and its less successful neighbor. In previous versions of this post, this covered the entire end of Texas Avenue (briefly touching on things that would eventually receive full updates like Barry Pool Company), and up until recently still waxed nostalgic on the importance of the "last intersection" of Texas Avenue and the world beyond...but I've made my nostalgia clear in writing this entire blog.¹ For years there was a Diamond Shamrock at 3129 Texas Avenue South (listed as "Big Diamond No. 1" in some materials) that based on listings and aerials, opened between 1984 and 1989. It even featured a car wash station in the back. I'm not sure when it closed (2005?) but it was torn down by December 2006.

Burger King was the only occupant of the former Diamond Shamrock site for years. (Photo by author, ~2014)
A Burger King partially redeveloped the space (same address) and opened in 2008 (the Villa Maria/29th location opened first), this Burger King opened almost a year after the one at Culpepper Plaza closed (which was torn down and replaced with a Chick-fil-A). However, even with Burger King's construction, there was still a good amount of space leftover, and after over a decade, was finally built out as Boomtown BBQ Company, a restaurant out of Beaumont and located at 3125 Texas Avenue South. This restaurant opened in August 2020, which was still a bit of bad timing for obvious reasons and closed in February 2022.² The Eccell/Burger Mojo group reopened it as So-Fly Chicken Sandwiches in July 2022, but it closed in mid-March 2023. Allegedly, this was because the owners reportedly had a good offer on the building, but it fell through (the rumor was Taco Bell, which would later show up at Jones Crossing). The site languished for two more years until the announcement of Mojo Tortilla Company (in the vein of something similar to Fuego) in April 2025, and opened in October of that year.

1. The original post described how the roads around here were reconfigured. This was moved to a new article.
2. It appears that the original Beaumont location went under.
UPDATE 06-21-2025: Major post update, stripping some parts and integrating previous updates. Better dates, too.
UPDATE 10-16-2025: Mojo Tortilla Company is now open. A second footnote was added. The last paragraph was touched up to account for this and to fix a minor error from the last rewrite.

The Burger King Near Blinn

From August 2019 with the gas station recently de-Rattled. Picture by author.
When I first made this post back in January 2012, it was titled "The Terrible Food at Blinn", which was a rant on how awful the food was at Blinn compared to my new digs at A&M (which only lasted one semester before food was outsourced to Compass/Chartwells). I have no idea what Blinn's current offerings are like but was astounded at what awful quality it was: there were very few places to eat on campus at all. There were vending machines (overpriced more than usual), the college bookstore with a small selection of convenience store items (Pop-Tarts were the usual item of choice here, despite an obvious push to stock more "healthy" items), and the student center having two "food court" type establishments, both of which were absolutely terrible, "Clux Delux" and "Block & Barrel". Clux Delux, according to what the packaging stating was supposed to be a bit like a poor man's Chick-fil-A, but it was just cafeteria food sitting under heat lamps, with cartoonishly bad everything. Unidentifiable gloop, an item on the menu literally listed as "chicken chunks"...Clux Delux had it all. Block & Barrel was just pre-packaged items including soggy, plastic-wrapped sandwiches (when were they made? who knows!)

This was depressing to me, as way back when Blinn was opening the Student Center building in the early 2000s, it had real fast food, one of which was a Taco Bell (I suspect the other was a Yum! Brands restaurant). Indeed, underneath the cheap banners of CD and B&B, you could see holes drilled in where the restaurant signs once were...and you know you're in for a real disappointment when Taco Bell is considered high cuisine to whatever they served.

Naturally, no one but the desperate wanted to eat the overpriced slop at the student center, so the nearest go-to place was a Burger King at the corner of 29th and Villa Maria, and due to schedules, was still too long to be walked to and from. Opened in 2007 along with an adjacent Rattlers', the first new Burger King in town in over two decades (certainly slow compared to the growth of the city's McDonald's restaurants). My memories of it were thinking it was grimier than the typical Burger King, and also around 2011 or 2012 when they switched to having monitors for the menu instead of just the normal menu system that slid to show breakfast and lunch items at different times.

The Rattlers', of course, is still branded as such, despite the takeover of the chain by Stripes. The chain's Shell stations have all been converted to Sunoco stations, but the Exxon-branded Rattlers' remain, for some reason. Or at least they would, except this is no longer a Rattlers', and instead a generic Exxon convenience store as of August 2019. (It also throws the other Exxon Rattlers', like the store on Boonville and Highway 6, or the one in Navasota, into doubt). This seems to have happened very recently, it's even still on the Stripes store locator page (#5258) as of this writing but lacks even the Stripes drink cups. The convenience store is at 2411 East 29th Street whereas Burger King is at 2401.

As an update to the above written, as of March 2020, the name of the convenience store is now called "Rustlers Den", a similar name to the Rattlers except with red lettering.

Downtown Bryan's Chicken Express

The Chicken Express here didn't look much different from the Burger King it replaced. This picture is from August 2019 by the author.
While I do tend to cover many fast food restaurants on this blog, not all of them have a good story behind them. Chicken Express here is the third building on this particular piece of land. The first reference to 405 East 29th Street was in 1951 as the McDonald Funeral Home, which moved in 1958 to a new building at 1513 S. College Avenue (while the address is now 1515, this is still a funeral home) and in 1963 was redeveloped as a location of Town & Country Food Stores and within a few years became a UtoteM¹; however, by the mid-1970s it became a Greyhound bus terminal. Despite the fact that it was dirty and run-down especially by the late 1990s and early 2000s, and I've been told the building started out as a UtoteM (and that may have had Amoco gas, from what I've heard) and became a bus station by 1980. I don't think it was remodeled much at all between tenants, and it had a drop ceiling, florescent lighting, really worn tiles, possibly dated from 1960s to 1970s, some rather drab and cheap-looking chairs, and the like. There were a few vending machines, including some candy dispensers and (if I remember right) even a coffee vending machine. While it was a miserable place that seemed to be falling apart, it had charm (though I'm sure I'm the only one that thinks that) as a wonderfully grungy place that was a gritty time capsule of the 1980s.

Around 2008 this was knocked down (along with a house at at the corner of 29th and South Houston Avenue) and redeveloped into 401 S. Texas Avenue, a new Burger King which,  despite the new Texas Avenue address, the site was rebuilt to not allow access to Texas Avenue. It was the fourth new Burger King in the area under franchisee Shiloh Foods, after opening the first Burger King in 22 years at East 29th Street to replace the Culpepper Plaza location which closed, a new College Station location, as well as a location at Highway 21 East with more to come (when Highway 21's location opened it was to be "one of several" new restaurants built in the area), with the last one built here.² In December 2010, it closed after operating for about 18 months, and Shiloh Foods folded soon after, selling the remaining stores. Part of the problem was the chronic issues with the company itself, of course, the "Creepy King" advertising with Crispin Porter + Bogusky wasn't turning the sales it used to and sales were back dropping again after a brief resurgence in the mid-2000s and selling out to 3G Capital.

In spring 2012 the vacant Burger King was reopened as Chicken Express, which made little changes to the restaurant beyond some new paint (if I recall it looked like a Burger King on the inside as well).

1. The chain collapsed but a remnant of that chain would continue to operate in West Texas and grow for many years until it was eventually bought by Stripes, and ultimately, 7-Eleven.
2. The one in Chappell Hill was also built during this time, but that's not exactly local.

UPDATE 10-05-2025:: Maintenance-related update. Added [Texas Avenue] and replaced [downtown] with [Downtown Bryan]. A more extensive update is planned in the future.
UPDATE 03-12-2026: Post rewrite done, though it incorporates much of the previous post. Renamed post to "Downtown Bryan's Chicken Express" from "Chicken Express, Downtown Bryan".