Early years The history of Minyard Food Stores dates back to the 1930s. A.W. "Eck" Minyard, a postal employee, purchased a store at 6011 Lindsley Avenue in
East Dallas for $1,200. His primary motivation for the purchase was to provide jobs for his two younger brothers, H.C. "Henry" and M.T. "Buddy" Minyard, who had just completed high school. At that time, the country was in the depths of the
Great Depression and jobs were scarce. On February 12, 1932, the first Minyard Food Store opened around the corner from the Minyard family home. The clapboard store was in size. A.W. Minyard initially continued his job as a postal worker while running the store on Sundays. He would later quit the postal job to focus fully on the grocery business. His sister Fay and another brother, H.J. "Hap" Minyard had joined the others by the late 1930s. The store was successful enough to spawn the opening of another store and a convenience store by the close of the decade. When the United States entered
World War II, the younger Minyard brothers joined the military. A.W. and Fay Minyard, closed all of the stores, with the exception of the original East Dallas location. After the war, a total of three new stores opened during the 1940s.
Growth The 1950s were a decade of growth for Minyard stores. Six new stores were opened, including the first outside of
Dallas County in
McKinney in 1957. In 1959, the business opened its largest store to date in
Lancaster. At , the Lancaster Minyard featured new technology such as mercury vapor lighting, a 200-car parking lot, automatic air-opened doors, background music, and air-conditioning. With its market share declining due to pressure from larger chains (such as Walmart putting full grocery stores in their Walmart Supercenters, and Target doing the same), Minyard sold its 37 Carnival stores to a group including
Houston-based
Fiesta Mart, Inc. in 2008. Minyard also closed or sold its Sack N Save stores to independent operators: the last one (in Denton) would close and the property sold to the University of North Texas. In May 2011, 10 Minyard locations were acquired by RLS Supermarkets of
Carrollton. RLS kept the Minyard name on all of them; the locations included Dallas, Duncanville, Balch Springs, Fort Worth, Irving, Lancaster, and Mesquite. ==Closure of Brand==