Straub's Markets will close its Central West End store at 302 N. Kingshighway Blvd. on Sept. 25, ending a run of nearly 80 years at the corner location across from the Chase Park Plaza hotel. The grocer is offering 10% off all departments and 20% off liquor, wine and beer as it clears remaining inventory before the doors shut for good.
The closure, first reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, comes three months after the family-owned chain quietly put the 0.81-acre property on the market. According to KSDK, Straub's listed the site through CBRE in June 2026 with an asking price of $3.25 million, even though city records put the appraised value above $2.1 million and 2025 property taxes at $28,115. Straub's positions itself as a fine grocer built around local products, upscale counter services, and luxury and imported items, including what the company calls its world famous chicken salad counter.
A Neighborhood Fixture Since the Late 1940s
The Central West End store originally opened in 1948 in a space that had housed an existing grocery store, situating Straub's directly across from the Chase Park Plaza, the same KSDK report notes. The company's roots go back further still: founder William Straub opened Straub's first store in Webster Groves in 1917, building on a business he had run since 1901 by collecting and delivering grocery orders door-to-door via horse and buggy before eventually opening a brick-and-mortar location.
Straub's expanded and contracted its footprint over the decades, having also opened and later closed additional locations in Brentwood, Crestwood, Northland Plaza and Ellisville. As competition intensified in the Central West End, the company invested $1.5 million in 2015 to renovate the 15,000-square-foot Kingshighway store, adding skylights, floor-to-ceiling glass and updated fixtures just as Whole Foods Market prepared to open nearby on West Pine Boulevard, according to the same KSDK account.
Boutique Grocers Face a Tougher Market
The Central West End closure lands amid a broader retreat by specialty grocers across the region and the industry. Natural and specialty grocery retailers have expanded at roughly half the rate of conventional chains like Walmart and Kroger since 2020, per the Specialty Food Association's 2024–2025 industry report cited by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Locally, independent chain Fields Foods folded entirely in September 2023 after months of unpaid rent, tax delinquencies and legal challenges, once operating six stores at its peak, the outlet reports.
Even a major regional player struggled with the standalone specialty format: Schnucks shuttered its Eatwell Market concept in 2024, less than four years after launching the organic and natural grocery brand in Columbia in 2020 and expanding it to Chesterfield in 2023, per the same report. Straub's, meanwhile, remains family-owned and operated by the third, fourth and fifth generations of the Straub family, with leadership that includes CEO Jack “Trip” Straub III and Ellie Straub Huff, who joined the company in 2021.
What Comes Next for the Kingshighway Corner
Straub's is selling the Central West End building outright, and CBRE's commercial listing pitches the 22,489-square-foot property as ripe for redevelopment into multi-family housing, a hotel, medical office space or senior living, according to the Post-Dispatch's reporting on the listing. Straub's has said it expects future owners to make a positive addition to the Central West End and the surrounding community.
Whatever comes next will inherit a corner in one of the city's busiest commercial and tourist districts. The Central West End welcomes more than 4.6 million visitors annually, Park Central Development executive director Abdul Abdullah said in August, a figure Hoodline reported in its coverage of the neighborhood's Jazz & Blues Festival. Straub's will continue operating its three suburban locations in Clayton, Town and Country, and Webster Groves after the Kingshighway store closes.
