Tom Thumb to reopen supermarket at former location in Grapevine

Tom Thumb is coming back to a familiar location in Grapevine.

Safeway, which owns the popular North Texas grocery chain and sold the Tom Thumb store at Texas 121 and Hall-Johnson Road in 2014 when it merged with Albertsons, has bought the site back from H-E-B/Central Market.

Tom Thumb plans to reopen a supermarket there, though a specific timeline has not yet been determined, spokesperson Connie Yates said.

Safeway sold the Grapevine store along with 11 other Tom Thumb and Albertsons stores in North Texas as part of a divestment required by the Federal Trade Commission to win approval for the merger. In all, 168 stores were divested in eight states.

The Grapevine store was acquired by Minyard Food Stores and became a Sun Fresh Market in 2015. But last year, Sun Fresh closed the store and San Antonio-based H-E-B acquired it and five other properties from Sun Fresh’s owner, RLS.

H-E-B said it was evaluating the sites for expansion of its Central Market chain, and later announced that it would convert two former Sun Fresh stores in Dallas. In November, it said it would likely sell or lease the Grapevine location.

In a statement announcing the sale of the store back to Safeway, Central Market said a complete renovation is underway at the Midway Road and Northwest Highway location in Dallas, which it expects to open early next year. No time frame has been set for the other store, at McKinney and Lemmon avenues in Dallas’ Uptown neighborhood.

This story was originally published February 7, 2017 at 10:35 AM with the headline "Tom Thumb to reopen supermarket at former location in Grapevine."