Groceteria wrote:As of 1953, there were a total of 34 locations listed:
- 11 co-branded stores (e.g. "Deckard's Tom Thumb")
- 8 "Food Marts"
- 15 "Super Marts"
Given that there were about five in Waco during this time, I would guess that the actual "chain" had far more stores (at least 40+) that just weren't listed in the Dallas (proper) directory. What I don't know is when the Cullum Cos. started to buy out the "other" Tom Thumb stores or revoke the name.
In 1953, Tom Thumb Stores Inc. advertised in the paper, instructing potential employees to see "Mr. Bost". This was located at 2533 Hawes Road in the A.W. Cullum Building. No references to Bost and Cullum appear together prior to 1948 when the Cullums bought Toro and rebranded them as Tom Thumb. An article from 1951 entitled "Brothers-Sister Team Expands Food Business" that explains that Bost was like a brother to the Cullum team "personally and in business relations", and that there were
91 affiliate independent Tom Thumb stores. It also mentions that Bost had sold his first Tom Thumb store to the Cullums. The 1951 article also mentions that it was the Cullums who came up with the mascot (though notably not the name), so it's possible (likely?) that the Cullums (being grocery wholesalers)
were tangentially involved in the early years of Tom Thumb. Knowing we do now, it would seem like what happened between the Cullums and Bost was very bad.
A 1954 article mentions that there were two companies, Tom Thumb Stores Inc. and A.W. Cullum Co. Inc. (Cullum controlled both, but Bost was vice president and general manager of the Tom Thumb stores); at this point there were 14 Cullum-owned stores and 75 franchise stores. Only Dallas, Cleburne, and Gainesville had actual Cullum owned stores. The official Tom Thumb site mentions that there were 20 stores in the chain, that appears to be accurate from the "owned" end, as a 1955 article mentions that Cullum bought McCullars of Tyler (4 stores).
A February 1956 article says that there were 19 supermarkets (14 in Dallas, 4 in Tyler, and one in Cleburne, I guess Gainesville had closed) owned by Cullum and 66 independent stores (dropping). The article correctly says that the first Tom Thumb was opened on Preston Road by Bost in 1945. The same article mentioned that Tom Thumb would open six stores in 1956 (no more than 20k square feet each). Bost was still working his position in the late 1950s, and in 1965 article talks about how Tom Thumb started in 1945 by Bost. (Advertisements mentioning Bost appeared in 1960)
In 1968, Bost was listed with other Tom Thumb execs for a "20th Anniversary Celebration" (of the Cullum stores, not the original Tom Thumb). The narrative already seemed to be changing.
In 1970, Bost retired and the company had a "J.R. Bost Award" for the best employees, but the narrative was already changing, an article mentions a meatcutter who worked since the "very beginning" in 1948--the founding of the Cullum-owned Tom Thumb chain but not the first Tom Thumb. But continuing forward to 1975, they talk about creating the Tom Thumb name and logo, and hiring Bost from Safeway...notably
not what happened in reality. The 1975 article does mention that the change to the Cullum Companies was in 1969, presumably merging the wholesale business with Tom Thumb. This is probably when Bost retired. Their entry to Austin in 1972 was through a chain called Rylander.
I can't find anywhere regarding Bost's death but I find it suspicious how quickly Bost was written out of the narrative, despite the fact that they did have an award in his honor. I also can't find when the last of the franchisee Tom Thumb stores disappeared, probably in the 1960s when Cullum bought Page Drug Stores and Simon David.
In 1977, the archives I have to access to in Dallas Morning News ends. I don't know what happened next to Tom Thumb. Rumors of it merging with Randall's Food Markets of Houston happened early as 1983, and Tom Thumb sold eight stores to Albertsons in 1989, six of those were in Austin. Since Tom Thumb remained in Austin until the mid-1990s, I have no idea why they would give that "in" to a competitor. It also had partnered with Wal-Mart for the first Hypermart USA store and had purchased a number of former Safeway stores when the Dallas division closed in 1987.
I also have no idea why the Cullums chose to sell out in 1992 to Randall's. Randall's was actually far smaller in store count, so the number of stores Randall's owned more than doubled (46 to 125), and a result it was saddled in debt. Randall's did open a number of newer, larger stores but also did a lot of damage to the company. Cullum's management was bottoms-up to Randalls top-down and that caused a lot of chaos and the loss of management. From the get-go, Randall's had eliminated about 75% of Tom Thumb's upper management and outsourced the distribution (Cullum had originally been a wholesaler and self-distributed, Randall's outsourced it to Fleming).
Randall's never did recover from their debt, and their net store growth ground to a halt. A buyout from KKR infused the company with cash in 1997 but at the cost of majority control, and by 1999 when Safeway approached Randalls, the Onsteads (which owned Randalls) only owned 20% of the company. This happened at around the same time Tom Thumb returned to self-distribution, as Randalls had purchased a huge distribution center that Food Lion had built in the early 1990s what they had thought would be the home to a massive division.
Despite Safeway cutting a lot of labor and niceties out of Tom Thumb, Tom Thumb did not suffer a similar fate to Randalls, as Tom Thumb's base was located in stable, upper-class areas fairly close to the city, whereas Randalls stores were located in suburban areas, many of which were declining at about the time Safeway took over. Still, the market share had declined to 15% by 2004 (not sure what it was before) behind Albertsons and Walmart, and that was before a round of closures by Safeway in 2005 that closed nine stores. With the brutalizing of Albertsons starting in 2006, only by the combined forces of Tom Thumb, Albertsons, and Market Street were they able to get a market share that edges out Kroger. That's how bad it got.
By the way, ask me (you should have my email) if you want any other of the articles I found while researching it.