{"id":478207,"date":"2026-10-27T14:32:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T14:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/478207\/"},"modified":"2026-10-27T14:32:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T14:32:14","slug":"wheatsville-mangiasaurus-waves-goodbye-as-wheatsville-co-op-closes-45-year-old-location-the-daily-texan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/478207\/","title":{"rendered":"Wheatsville \u2018Mangiasaurus\u2019 waves goodbye as Wheatsville Co-op closes 45-year-old location \u2013 The Daily Texan"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWheatsville Co-op President Brandon Hines (left in dinosaur costume) and Dave Addenbrook (right in dinosaur costume) wait to ride their bikes behind the “Mangiasaurus” as it travels to the South Lamar location on Oct. 25.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

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As a crane lowered a bright green dinosaur from the roof of the Wheatsville Co-op on Guadalupe Street Sunday morning, a crowd gathered in the parking lot below to pay their respects to the store\u2019s mascot before the location concluded its last day of business.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Mangiasaurus,\u2019 a bright green, 11-foot-tall, 800-pound foam dinosaur, has occupied the store\u2019s roof since 2007. Movers used a crane to lower the statue onto a flatbed, where it was then relocated to Wheatsville\u2019s second location on South Lamar Boulevard. A parade of bikers followed the truck, who rode with the Mangiasaurus to its new home in South Austin.<\/p>\n

Wheatsville board president Brandon Hines and board member Dave Addenbrook, who participated in a bike parade to honor the store\u2019s closure, wore green dinosaur costumes in honor of the mascot\u2019s relocation. Hines, a Wheatsville owner for over thirty years, said that while he\u2019s sad to see the Guadalupe store close, he believes in the strength of their remaining South Lamar location and the Co-op\u2019s mission.<\/p>\n

\u201cWheatsville is more than a grocery store,\u201d Hines wrote in an email. \u201cThere are no corporate owners extracting profits for summer homes or rocket ships. Every dollar of profit is reinvested in the coop and, when times are good, redistributed to the more than 27,000 owners.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hines wrote that Wheatsville operates as a \u201ccommunity owned cooperative\u201d where financial contributors are rewarded with partial ownership of the business. Owners elect members to a board of directors that collaborates to make business decisions for the Co-op.<\/p>\n

Wheatsville announced in an Oct. 12 Facebook post that the Guadalupe store would end its operations after Oct. 25. The Co-op website<\/a> said the closure is due to the store\u2019s poor \u201cfinancial performance and viability.\u201d The board initially considered moving to locations of the Austin \u201cFresh Plus\u201d grocery chain, but abandoned the plan after determining it to be not financially viable. The building that housed the Guadalupe store is now up for lease<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Wheatsville, named after the first Black community in Austin, first opened for business in 1976 and moved to its Guadalupe location in 1981. Co-op General Manager Tanya Carney said the success of the Guadalupe store allowed owners to open the South Lamar location in 2013.<\/p>\n

The store slowed operations in the weeks leading up to the closure and offered discounts on remaining items, according to Wheatsville\u2019s Facebook. Customers who visited the location Sunday were offered free coffee, bagels and buy-one-get-one breakfast tacos to commemorate the end of the store.<\/p>\n

The closure also fell on Mangiasaurus Day, an unofficial local holiday established by former Austin Mayor Will Wynn on Oct. 25, 2004, after the dinosaur was damaged in a botched high school prank earlier that year, according to reporting by KVUE<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Members of the paleontology department at UT restored the sculpture, which was reinstalled on the roof of Mangia\u2019s Pizza, the previous home for the monster and its namesake. Now that it has left Guadalupe, Mangiasaurus is set to take residence in the South Lamar Wheatsville store\u2019s produce section, Hines wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely the end of an era, but the beginning of a new chapter,\u201d Carney said. \u201cWe\u2019re excited to be able to continue to serve Austin.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wheatsville Co-op President Brandon Hines (left in dinosaur costume) and Dave Addenbrook (right in dinosaur costume) wait to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-478207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478207","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=478207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}