Grocery chain upgrades as it listens to ‘a lot of good ideas’ from shoppers
Fiesta Mart, the Houston-based grocery chain that launched in 1972 with a single location on the city’s near north side, rose four places to land at No. 6 on the Chronicle 100’s list of privately held companies for 2016.
The chain, which primarily targets Hispanic shoppers, operates 71 stores overall, including 34 in Houston.
Michael Byars, Fiesta Mart’s president and CEO, said the chain upgraded 10 percent of its stores last year.
“We did a tremendous amount of consumer research with our shoppers, and they gave us a lot of good ideas,” Byars said. “Part of what we heard was that our stores hadn’t gotten a lot of capital upgrades over the years, so we went back to the basics and made sure our stores were clean and well-lit; really basic things.”
Fiesta Mart also added 11 Dallas locations last year with the purchase of Minyard Food Stores. Fiesta owns 35 locations in Dallas now and two locations in Austin.
The chain plans to add two more Houston stores in 2018, Byars said, but he declined to provide more information.
The company employs 8,000, with 4,500 of those based in Houston.
“Every time we add a store, we bring on board about 150 people,” Byars said. “So we can look for more growth in Houston as we move forward.”
Acon Investments, a Washington, D.C.based investment firm that also owns Katybased Igloo Products, purchased Fiesta Mart in 2015.
The grocery chain originally began with two business partners, one of whom worked with a supermarket chain in South America.