Trader Joe’s adds Spring and Bellaire sites in Houston expansion

Trader Joe’s is planting two more flags in Greater Houston, with a new Spring filing and visible site work underway in Bellaire. For shoppers, that means closer access is coming to the north and west sides of the metro, while the company’s Houston map gets denser around two addresses that already sit in busy retail corridors.

In Spring, the chain filed plans for a store at 21364 Kuykendahl Road in Spring Town Center, with the filing dated April 14 and reported the next day. The project is described as a 12,506-square-foot shell building with an estimated cost of about $2 million. Construction is expected to start in June and wrap by the end of January 2027. Local reporting said there are eight operating Trader Joe’s stores in the Houston area now, which would make Spring the ninth once it opens and the first Trader Joe’s in Spring.

Bellaire is moving faster. Crews have already started site work at the former Randalls site at 5130 Bellaire Blvd., inside the Bellaire Boulevard Shopping Center. Bellaire city officials confirmed Trader Joe’s plans in December 2025, and the redevelopment has been tied to a site that has been vacant since Randalls left in 2021. The property has a longer grocery history too: it originally housed a Weingarten’s grocery in 1959 before later becoming a Randalls.

The Bellaire address matters because of where it sits. The site is in a highly visible retail corridor near Bellaire Boulevard, Bissonnet Street and South Rice Avenue, across from the first two-story H-E-B to open in the Houston area just outside Loop 610. One report said Trader Joe’s will occupy about two-thirds of the former Randalls space, leaving room for another tenant, a sign this is being treated as a full retail reset rather than a simple backfill.

For crew members and managers, the two projects point to the parts of Trader Joe’s expansion that matter most on the ground: hiring waves, internal transfer opportunities, training, and a deeper regional talent pipeline. The company has said it plans to open more than 20 stores in 2026, and with more than 600 stores nationwide and more than 26 in Texas, the Houston build-out suggests Trader Joe’s is still leaning on the small-format, high-touch store model that depends on well-trained crews more than automation.