The current Roy Pope Grocery has reduced its hours and now will close May 31 as a makeover begins under new owner Westland Hospitality Group.
Plans call for the 83-year-old neighborhood grocery and deli at 2300 Merrick St. to be remodeled into a restaurant and bar with the Roy Pope name, managing partner Bourke Harvey said.
Westland, known for JD’s Hamburgers and for revitalizing 60-year-old Pulido’s Kitchen & Cantina and 73-year-old Margie’s Italian Gardens, will serve a original menu of contemporary Southern Americana dishes menu at the new Roy Pope restaurant, Harvey said.
Like Westland’s other restaurants, Roy Pope will include tributes to the original founders, Rose and Roy Pope.
The menu will include steaks, seafood and the westside neighborhood’s legacy “Mac salad,” said Harvey, a former Roy Pope grocery sacker. The chef is Levi Gardner of Margie’s.
That was served at the late Willis “Mac” McIntosh’s popular 1970s restaurants, including the former Carriage House steakhouse nearby on Camp Bowie Boulevard. McIntosh was also a butcher in the custom meat market at Roy Pope.
Roy Pope Grocery in Fort Worth was a finalist in a Star-Telegram Readers Choice poll forthe best places to shop local for Christmas gifts.
(Amanda McCoy/amccoy@star-telegram.com)
For Westland Hospitality, the Roy Pope restaurant is yet another rescue of an old Fort Worth tradition.
The company reopened the flagship Pulido’s near South University Drive and added locations in Hurst, Willow Park and Eastland.
The company also owns Curly’s Frozen Custard and West Side Cafe along with Magdalena’s Catering & Events, Westland Gardens and Westland Bar Co.
The remodeled bar at Pulido’s original location on Pulido Street in Fort Worth, as seen June 20, 2024.
For now, Roy Pope Grocery will open 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., the grocery announced on social media. The deli is serving lunches from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Grocery delivery services have hit small neighborhood supermarkets hard in recent years. In particular, Roy Pope is 1 mile from Central Market, a large specialty grocery from the San Antonio-based H-E-B Grocery chain.
As word spread in 2020 that Roy Pope Grocery was closing and for sale, customers drifted in.
The original Roy Pope Grocery opened in 1943 and closed in 2020. It reopened duirng the COVID pandemic in 2021 under owner Mark Harris as a gourmet market, deli and coffee and wine bar led by restaurateurs Louis Lambert and Chris Reale of the Paris Coffee Shop.
But it struggled as a grocery, and lacked the dining space and service for a thriving restaurant.
The end of the Roy Pope grocery business brings an end to the west Fort Worth tradition that once saw Pope team up with fellow grocer Charles Kincaid.
Pope and Kincaid operated a store together until they split in 1946 to operate competing stores.
Kincaid’s Grocery & Market, nearby on Camp Bowie Boulevard, stopped selling groceries in 1991 and became Kincaid’s Hamburgers.
Fried chicken developed a wide following at the old Roy Pope Grocery, which closed in 2020.
The regular cheeseburger at the old Roy Pope Grocery in Fort Worth.
The old Roy Pope hot food line at a “catfish Friday” lunch.
March 28, 1955: At Fort Worth’s Roy Pope Grocery, which is soon to become a Super Save Market, Roy Pope (right) and Willis McIntosh (left), manager of the meat market, look over a prime rib cut.
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JD’s Hamburgers, Pulido’s Kitchen & Cantina, Margie’s Italian Gardens, Curly’s Frozen Custard, Magdalena’s Catering & Events, West Side Cafe,
shorter hours and only through May 31 as a complete makeover continues under new owner Westland Hospitality Group.
current Roy Pope Grocery will be open only at midday through May 31 until it closes for a complete makeover