How a Historic Backfill Explains Grapevine Main Street

Roughly halfway between Grapevine’s new passenger rail station and the Old Main Street shopping center, worlds collide behind a curtain of dried peppers and fresh produce. Offering everything from candied pecan gift packages to hand-made tamales, the Farmer’s Market of Grapevine feels like it could have been one of the first storefronts to open in the 500 block of the City’s Historic District. In reality, the specialty grocer will barely turn ten before the calendar rolls into 2026.

Just over a decade ago, their shop was a 7-Eleven.

Jack and Raquel Morehead, co-owners of the Farmer’s Market, watched the previous tenant come and go from a temporary stand down the street. Fruits and vegetables have been a Morehead family business for decades, and the couple partnered with Grapevine’s own Convention and Visitor’s Bureau to expand a pop-up event into a weekend draw featuring locally sourced foods and crafts. They rode a wave of small business enthusiasm and health-conscious consumer trends into their current lease, risking everything on a brick-and-mortar location that combines the unique nostalgia of an authentic historic Main Street with a resurgence in demand for fresh, organic food.

The Positive Consequences of Main Street Magic

These days, it’s hard to imagine more valuable commercial real estate than the eight blocks of storefronts between Dallas Road and Northwest Highway in the heart of Grapevine. Every year, hundreds of thousands of visitors peruse those shops, stopping to sip and savor a wide variety of entrees, cocktails, and special treats. Historic Main Street trails only Grapevine Mills for retail visitation in our City, and may even rank ahead of the multi-million-square foot center for private demand.

But it wasn’t always that way.

“When I first moved to Grapevine, Main Street was pretty much dead,” said Mayor Pro Tem Darlene Freed. “A lot of the buildings were empty, and a particular person bought up quite a few buildings, repurposed them, and over time created more energy downtown. I also think there was a decision – led by the Mayor and the Council – to not have Main Street be just a street for restaurants or just a street for shopping. That it would have a blend of uses and things that would make it attractive…. we wanted the Historic District and Main Street to be a place where people could live, work, and also go out and have a drink or a cup of coffee within walking distance.” 

Using a specific set of guidelines for historic preservation alongside more traditional regulations, City leaders crafted a blueprint for protecting and expanding the area’s century-old charm. Certain sections – City Hall, the Town Square Gazebo, and the Vintage Railroad, for example – fall under their direct supervision. The rest blossomed by collective effort from private owners, dedicated citizens, and special interest groups. Their success ushered in a new era of high demand that felt familiar to Freed, who launched a real estate career in the metroplex back in the 1980s.

“[Working in Commercial Real Estate] in downtown Dallas, I learned that some things never change, and that’s location, location, location,” said Freed. “We have such a limited supply and such a high demand, I don’t think any of us ever envisioned that the Historic District or Main Street – and even Dallas Road, with the Transit District – would have the kind of pricing, demand, and interest from the kind of people that want to come and build, redevelop, or be a part of this community… the value of our real estate is, for lack of a better word, a consequence of the kind of community we have here. A good one, but a consequence. People make a commitment here and they stay here. They’re just not motivated by making a dollar. It’s more the whole experience of Main Street and downtown.” 

Conforming Uses and Consumer Demand

Building a consistent, authentic community takes time. Early investors in the Historic District bought into the vision of a mixed-use destination, often working to find complementary tenants rather than competitive ones. The goodwill between them created fertile soil for family businesses like the Farmer’s Market of Grapevine. Staff from Weinberger’s Deli, just across the street, brought the Moreheads food while they labored to renovate their storefront. 

Today, they and other area chefs visit regularly in search of fresh avocadoes or the perfect tomato.

“We are very supportive of small businesses. I think we have one or two business on Main Street that are a franchise – you know, that have more than one store somewhere, not necessarily a big franchise – but most are mom and pop stores. They’re owned by individuals,” said Duff O’Dell, who currently holds Place 6 on Grapevine’s City Council. 

“We have a Historic Downtown association and they partner with our Police Department, our Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, the City offices, all of that. We all meet together to try to support and help business thrive and maintain their status on Main Street… we’ve been accused over the years of being sometimes difficult to do business with, but as a result we have what we have. If you have high expectations, you get quality.”

There’s a limit to what City Council controls, of course. Citizens weren’t particularly excited when 7-Eleven signed a lease in the middle of the Historic District. The company went to great lengths to comply with guidelines and requirements, adding beautiful windows to the authentic brick exterior before they moved into the building in April 2013. But they couldn’t win the community over. Grapevine residents voted with their dollar, and the store changed hands two-and-a-half years later.

“We’ve been very fortunate that we’ve had really good businesses that have wanted to be part of downtown. They really have fit in with the whole theme,” O’Dell said. “People take a lot of pride in that. I mean, they understand that these buildings are old, that they’ve been restored, and what that means to Grapevine… when you explain that to people, they buy into it. They want to be part of that, they want to protect it. So we’ve been very blessed, so far, that we see that. And we’ve added a lot over the years, in terms of regulations and stipulations, building materials, facades, and the quality of what you can do on Main Street. That has paid off just tremendously.”

Looking Back and Moving On

Quality, it turns out, is the Morehead family’s value proposition. While the design and offerings in their store make it look like a longtime staple for the area, the real appeal of the Farmer’s Market lies in its sourcing and selection. Jack has ties to growers across Texas, and Raquel has developed a network of specialty retailers that provide non-perishable goods better suited for travelers. The little market can’t offer the same bulk rates as a chain retailer, so they chose to emphasize something else: a commitment to only the highest-quality, locally sourced ingredients. 

“People are looking for price. They’re looking for fast and convenient. [Bulk retailers] caused all the little grocery stores to have to build their own fulfillment centers in order to keep up with production to sell things for the same price,” said Jack Morehead. “It just causes a complete loop of everything being mass-produced. Everything is sprayed on schedule, whether they need it or not… things definitely taste different. A lot of the new cantaloupe and things on the market today are hard and crunchy. You can’t hardly even eat them. It’s developed to all ripen at the same time, so they harvest the whole field at the same time and they might replant that whole field that same day.”

The Farmer’s Market of Grapevine has opted out of the trend, trusting in consumer demand for more flavorful and nutritious produce. Clean diets have become fashionable in the last decade or so, spurred first by research and influencers and again by a surge in home gardens and scratch cooking brought on by the pandemic lockdowns. According to Jack, demand for seedlings and plants exploded. It was a welcome trend for a family that had grown up in the tradition.

“My grandad and dad was buying and selling produce – and growing produce – before it was a fad,” Morehead said. “They were doing it because they were starving to death; they were just trying to make money. My dad always tells these stories about when he wanted a pair of shoes or a haircut or anything, his dad would have him knock doors with tomatoes. He’d go all through their neighborhood selling tomatoes… a lot of people were like that in that era.”

Three generations of plant salesmen shaped the store that’s taken root on Main Street today. In the months between 7-Eleven’s closure and the transfer of the lease to Raquel and Jack, they spent their days watching traffic in front of the store. Counting potential customers until the elder Moreheads agreed a physical location could work. The family put their savings into the lease, raced to fill the store, and opened to thunderous approval. Thanks, in part, to the renovators before them.

“They gave us a month to get the store ready, and it took pretty much all of our savings to get into the building, but this is how awesome the community of Grapevine is: we hung signs on the doors in fluorescent orange paper – ‘Farmer’s Market Coming Soon’ – and we started working day and night, literally,” said Morehead. “We had moved in the store within two weeks, but the people saw us working like that and brought us food. The community came out and took care of us.”

“The blessing of 7-Eleven being there is they spared absolutely no expense on finishing the building out. It had beautiful windows, a really nice cooler in it, and it could run Grapevine off the power panels back there. I small guy like me? I never could have went in there and finished that building out like that. It was all set and ready to go; all we had to do was build some tables and put some produce on them.”

That’s the rhythm of life on Main Street. What’s old becomes new again, but new things last as long as the community loves them.

Hear the full story from those who lived it in to the ‘Growing Grapevine’ podcast, streaming here on our site or your favorite app. You can also find us on social media, reach out directly to staff, or join our monthly newsletter for ongoing updates about the City of Grapevine.