Wheatsville plans to close Guadalupe store
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The Wheatsville Co-op is a cultural and commercial touchstone of old-school Austin. Photo: Asher Price/Axios
Citing logistical challenges and declining revenues, Wheatsville Co-op plans to close its location north of the University of Texas.
Why it matters: Wheatsville's Guadalupe Street location is a cultural and commercial touchstone of old-school, pre-fancy Austin, and its closure would fall in line with the shuttering of Nau's Drugs, Vulcan Video, Burger Tex, Las Manitas, Dart Bowl and many others over the last 15 years or so.
The big picture: Wheatsville will close its Guadalupe store by the end of 2026 "unless there is a change in circumstances," according to a store bulletin published Wednesday.
- It plans to attempt small-format stores, on the scale of 3,000-5,000 square feet, including at least one in the same neighborhood as the Guadalupe location, general manager Bill Bickford tells Axios. (The current Guadalupe store is about 12,000 square feet.)
- Small-format stores have had varying success locally, with stores like Royal Blue Grocery thriving and national chains like Foxtrot faltering.
- Wheatsville's South Lamar location will remain open.
Flashback: Named after the nearby Black freedom colony Wheatville, the co-op arose from the 1970s hippie counterculture movement, offering organic, fair trade products that were difficult to find elsewhere. The store participated in the United Farm Workers grape boycott and didn't sell grapes for 18 years.
- César Chávez visited the store in the 1990s to show his appreciation for its support of the boycott.
- Co-op members (there are more than 28,000, but you don't have to be one to shop there) last year contributed about $120,000 to a variety of nonprofits.
Between the lines: Austin's planned light rail will "limit our ability to effectively operate a grocery store at our present location," Bickford wrote in the bulletin.
- The planned Orange Line will disrupt shopping during construction, "when we can anticipate sales declines due to difficulty entering the parking lot or navigating our segment of Guadalupe."
- Citing engineering drawings and conversations with Austin Transit Partnership, the entity set up by the City of Austin and Cap Metro to design, finance and build the light rail project, Bickford said the current crosswalk at 31st Street will be shut down, and drivers will be unable to turn in to the store from the southbound lane. "We know from past market studies that a large majority of our sales come from the neighborhoods north of the store, so losing convenient access for southbound traffic will almost certainly result in a major sales decline," Bickford wrote.
- Finally, rail infrastructure will make it impossible for large supply vehicles to make it into the building.
The other side: The Wheatsville announcement comes shortly after reconceived transit plans for the area appear to spare burger stalwart Dirty Martin's, two blocks south of Wheatsville.
- In a statement to Axios, officials with Austin Transit Partnership said they are "early in the design process" and said their "focus will continue to be to minimize impacts anywhere possible," partly in the interest of "maintaining a vibrant business community."
The intrigue: Wheatsville officials said they were disinclined to protest the light-rail plan because the co-op "supports a vision of Austin that includes sustainable public transit, and voters in the census tracts closest to the store voted overwhelmingly in favor of" the light-rail plan, per the bulletin.
Reality check: Apart from the rail line challenges, sales at the Guadalupe location, which opened in 1981, have been declining for more than a decade, per Bickford's note.
- 2013 sales at Guadalupe were $18.6 million.
- Last year they were just $9.1 million. This year's sales are trending even lower.
Yes, and: Despite a 2009 renovation, portions of the Guadalupe building date to 1940.
- "If you were in the store in March, you may have noticed that we quite literally had a dinosaur falling through the roof, requiring structural repair," Bickford wrote.
- "Additional and substantial reinvestment in the building would be needed in the years ahead — investment that we cannot necessarily afford and that would likely have more return in some other location."
What's next: Wheatsville — whose current lease ends at the end of 2026 — is scouting locations for small-format stores to serve more neighborhoods.
- "These stores compete in a different segment of the market from the major grocery competitors such as H-E-B, Whole Foods, and Sprouts," Bickford wrote. "After years of trying to punch above our weight class among these behemoths, a pivot toward small-format stores presents an opportunity to serve our community in a different way than we do today."
- Bickford tells Axios that Wheatsville will not lay off its staff as it shifts to the small-format stores.