Scroll through any Victoria Facebook group and you will find Chicken Salad Chick, Dave's Hot Chicken, and Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen mentioned in the same sentence, as if they are all arriving on the same truck. They are not. As of this week, one of those three is weeks from opening, one has a contractor and a $3 million permit on file with the state, and one has been "coming to Victoria" since last fall with no permit anywhere in the public record.
The difference between those three tells you something the press releases will not: how to actually read Victoria's retail pipeline instead of just waiting on it.
The Signal That Actually Means Something
Any developer can post a rendering. A tenant list on a Facebook page is a lease, or sometimes just a conversation. The moment a project becomes real, in the sense that a bulldozer is coming, is when a permit shows up with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation.
Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen is the clean example. A permit filed March 19, 2026 confirmed a $3,072,500 new construction project at 6704 NE Zac Lentz Parkway, the lot in front of Home Depot and Boot Barn, next to the existing Toasted Yolk. The city's own building permit records name the contractor as CHC Construction, run by Kevin Henrichson, and the state's target completion date for the project is December 21, 2026. That is not a rumor. That is a filed document with a name, a dollar figure, and a date attached to it.
Compare that to Dave's Hot Chicken, which locals have been asking about since the fall.
Already Open, as of August 2026
Some of what people are still asking about online has, in fact, already happened. Ulta Beauty and Burlington both opened at Victoria Village, the shopping center going in near Kohl's. Burlington's opening landed on March 13, 2026, marking the chain's 147th Texas location at 8907 North Navarro Street. Five Below followed two weeks later, opening its doors March 27, the first store of its kind in the Victoria area, with the next-closest locations in Corpus Christi.
The same week, Ashley Furniture held a ribbon cutting of its own, not for a new arrival but for a relocation. The 104-year-old family-owned furniture business moved into a larger showroom on Zac Lentz Parkway, a detail that gets lost in the excitement over the new chains but matters if you are the kind of resident who has bought furniture there for a decade.
Here is where the full list of announced businesses actually stands right now.
| Business | Location | Status as of August 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Ulta Beauty | Victoria Village, North Navarro | Open |
| Burlington | 8907 North Navarro | Open since March 13, 2026 |
| Five Below | Victoria Village | Open since March 27, 2026 |
| Ashley Furniture | Zac Lentz Parkway, relocated showroom | Open |
| Chicken Salad Chick | North Navarro Street | Under construction, contractor targeting August 28, 2026 |
| Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen | 6704 NE Zac Lentz Parkway | Under construction, state target date December 21, 2026 |
| Ellianos Coffee | 605 E Airline Road | Under construction, state target date October 1, 2026 |
| Frontier Rodeo Coffee | 5402 North Navarro, former Kahve Coffee | Renovation underway, no confirmed date |
| Dave's Hot Chicken | 8511 N. Navarro | Announced, no permit filed as of this writing |
| Petco | Victoria Village | Announced, no completion date filed |
The city has been direct about why it is chasing this kind of growth in the first place. Danielle Williams, the city's Economic Development Director, put it plainly when the Victoria Village groundbreaking was announced.
New retail developments and restaurants are a key part of keeping local money local, since they encourage residents to do their shopping in Victoria rather than going to other cities or shopping online.
That framing matters if you have ever driven to Corpus Christi or San Antonio for something Victoria did not have. The city is not adding stores for the sake of a headline. It is trying to keep the drive shorter.
The One That's Been "Coming" the Longest
Dave's Hot Chicken has had the longest runway of any name on this list, and the least to show for it. The chain was confirmed for an 1.12-acre lot at 8511 N. Navarro, sandwiched between a vacant Taco Bueno and the Brown Bag Saloon, back in the fall of 2025. Nearly a year later, local coverage was still asking whether it was still actually coming, and as of this writing there is no building permit in the public record to answer that question one way or another.
Chicken Salad Chick, announced around the same window, tells the opposite story. Its permit shows construction starting June 22, 2026, with a state-projected completion of August 28, 2026, on North Navarro Street. The tenant of record is Tanya Johnson, the property owner is Victoria Exchange Development, and the interior build-out was designed by 1Architecture. In other words, a project that entered the conversation later than Dave's Hot Chicken is now three weeks from finishing, because it has a permit and Dave's does not.
That gap is the whole point of tracking this instead of just repeating what gets posted. An announcement is a hope. A permit is a schedule.
The Coffee Corner Nobody's Talking About
While the fried chicken race gets the attention, two coffee chains are converging on the same stretch of road with far less fanfare. Ellianos Coffee has a state target completion date of October 1, 2026 at 605 E. Airline Road. A few blocks over, Frontier Rodeo Coffee is renovating the old Kahve Coffee stand at 5402 North Navarro, the spot that was Victoria's first drive-thru-only coffee stand. The Frontier general manager had hoped for a March or April reopening, but as of this writing there is no confirmed opening date for that location.
That means Victoria could end up with two new drive-thru coffee options on roads most residents already drive daily, one with an actual state target date and one that has already blown past its own owner's original timeline, without either one making the kind of noise a fried chicken chain does.
What This Means If You're Timing a Saturday Run Up Navarro
If you are craving something specific, the calendar looks like this right now. Chicken salad is the closest bet, with a state target of late August, just weeks away. Scratch-made comfort food from Cheddar's is a December project, not a fall one. Ellianos has a firm October date for coffee, while Frontier Rodeo's timeline has already slipped past the spring window its own manager described. And if you are holding out for hot chicken, there is nothing on the books yet to tell you when, or even confirm that ground has broken.
None of this is complicated once you know where to look. The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation permit records and the city's own building permit reports are public, and they are more reliable than whatever is circulating in the comments section. The next time a name gets tossed around online, that is the place to check before you start planning the trip.
Victoria's retail corridor has moved fast over the past year, and it is easy to lose track of what is actually finished versus what is still a plan on paper. If you are watching this growth because you are thinking about where you want to live in relation to it, or you are curious what a stretch of road like this does to property values nearby, the Zaplac Group knows this market street by street. Contact the team when you are ready to talk about what any of this means for your own address.
