United opens new concept in Wolfforth

WOLFFORTH — A new United Express concept store opened Wednesday in Wolfforth, where a crowd of locals welcomed the company to town.

The 5,000-square-foot convenience store and gas station at 82nd Street and Marsha Sharp Freeway offers the typical fare, along with indoor and outdoor seating areas, fresh-made food and coffee and a walk-in beer cooler.

The store also features high-tech touches, like digital ordering screens for food and freestyle soda machines that offer hundreds of mixing options. Any item in the store can be ordered and picked up through the drive-thru, said Tony Crumpton, executive vice president of United, at the ribbon cutting.

“You can get anything through that drive-thru that’s in the store. Even things from that nice beer vault back there,” Crumpton said. “You can’t do that in Lubbock, Texas, but you can do that in Wolfforth, Texas.”

The Wolfforth store has been a long time coming, Crumpton said. Robert Taylor, president of the United Family, said the store is uniquely designed for the needs of the west Lubbock County town of 3,700 people, and will hopefully be replicated in other smaller communities.

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“It is important to United what happens here. This is a cornerstone and flagship,” Taylor said. “We see this as an answer to a lot of needs we have all throughout the states of Texas and New Mexico.”

Wolfforth business leaders are hopeful this will not be the only United location in town for long. Mike Wright with the Wolfforth Economic Development Corp. said bringing the supermarket brand to the city has been a goal for the group for years. He described the opening as a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

“Our hope is that this store is completely overrun every day,” Wright said with a laugh. “Then we can look forward to that second pot of gold: a United Supermarket.”

Taylor said he has similar goals.

“I’m very heavily counting on this not being the last investment that we make in Wolfforth,” he said. “As Wolfforth grows, and you see a lot of development, we want to grow with it. We plan to be a part of it.”

At the opening event, United donated $750 to its Wolfforth neighbor, the Wolfforth United Methodist Church. Taylor said the church has been welcoming and accommodating, allowing the convenience store to use its facilities for a hiring event.

The store also donated $5,000 to the Frenship Foundation for Leadership, a group that gives scholarships to students and grants to teachers in the school district. Donating money to nearby groups is a tradition for new United locations.