{"id":244928,"date":"2026-04-11T09:55:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T09:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/244928\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T09:55:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T09:55:13","slug":"is-this-retro-relic-one-of-san-antonios-most-unique-h-e-bs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/244928\/","title":{"rendered":"Is this retro relic one of San Antonio’s most unique H-E-Bs?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two questions you might be asked in San Antonio: What high\u00a0school did you go to, and which\u00a0H-E-B do you shop at?\u00a0<\/p>\n

When you hear these, it means locals are trying to figure out which side of town you’re from and where you live now. After all, every H-E-B in the city is just a little bit different, and your choice of store does say a lot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If your H-E-B of choice is at the corner of New Braunfels Avenue and Nacogdoches Road, you probably live near the Oak Park Northwood neighborhood<\/a>, or you just love all things retro. This brick grocery store has a completely different look compared to other H-E-Bs, and that would be because it started out as something else entirely.<\/p>\n

In 1927, the first Handy Andy grocery store opened in San Antonio at 1716-18 Broadway, and several more would pop up in the following decades. According to the Express-News<\/a>, nearly 60 had opened across the state by the 1970s.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It’s hard to give an exact timeline on the lifespan of this store in particular, but locals on the Vintage San Antonio Facebook page<\/a> reminisced on that bygone era. One said they remembered it being an empty lot in the 1950s, and another wrote that the store\u00a0“was mall-like” with a drug store and other small shops on the east end.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another local said there\u00a0was a tree that grew inside the store with a train going around it by the bakery. “The tree had got diseased and for [health] reasons had to be removed,” they recalled.<\/p>\n

Despite its charm, Handy Andy would be nudged out by price wars and competition as\u00a0H-E-B became ubiquitous. The chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1981, and locations dwindled or changed ownership before the last six shuttered in 2012.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Find it: 1955 Nacogdoches Road, San Antonio, TX 78209<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two questions you might be asked in San Antonio: What high\u00a0school did you go to, and which\u00a0H-E-B do…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":244929,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[86458,820,82,84,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-244928","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-mysahistory","9":"tag-mysastaff","10":"tag-san-antonio","11":"tag-san-antonio-headlines","12":"tag-san-antonio-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}