Business Beat: Peltier Ford in Longview prepares for move, plans music festival

Peltier Ford in Longview has claimed two spots on U.S. 259, one where the dealership will build a new home and a second that will be used for an unnamed surprise.

“We’re going to be breaking ground pretty quickly,” said General Manager Robert Adkison of Peltier Ford. The dealership will be next door to Hyundai of Longview and north of Fourth Street.

The Peltier family of companies purchased the former Pegues-Hurst Ford a little more than a year ago. The Ford dealership had operated in Longview for more than 100 years.

Currently located at the entry to the city at Spur 63 and Texas 31, Peltier officials had said it planned to relocate the Ford dealership when the sale was completed. Many of the city’s auto dealerships have moved to U.S. 259.

Adkison said the new dealership will be the first in the nation built using a completely new design for Ford dealerships.

“This is a complete new redesign,” he said. “No one has seen it.”

The new location should be open within two years.

The dealership also has posted a banner that simply says, “Peltier,” on vacant land at the southwest corner of Eastman and George Richey roads.

Adkison said exactly what is going there is a “surprise. That cat’s not out of the bag yet.”

He said the current Ford dealership employs close to 150 people. The new dealership, which will be built on 30 acres, will have between 200 and 225 employees. The existing dealership sits on 10 acres.

“I’ve rented all the properties around me. We’ve run out of room here,” he said of the current location. Also, he said it’s impossible for an older building like that to accommodate all the new technology involved in repairing vehicles.

The new location will have a “huge selection” of new and pre-owned Fords.

He said Peltier Ford in Longview ranks 27th out of all Ford dealerships in the nation. His location is selling about 400 cars a month, Adkison said, compared with 30 to 40 a month under previous ownership.

The dealership ships vehicles nationwide, he said, and he has a team of people who pick up people up from various airports and drive them to Longview to get they’ve purchased.

The new Ford dealership also will also offer new services, including a mobile service, in which technicians can perform simple repairs and maintenance at people’s homes and places of work.

“It’s like a Doordash for maintenance of a vehicle,” Adkison said.

Adkison also is hosting the first Peltier Fest from 5 to 8:30 p.m. May 24 at the existing dealership at 200 Spur 63. East Texas country music artists Chris Colston and Don Louis will perform during the event.

Peltier Fest will recognize the first year of Peltier’s ownership, pairing live music with a benefit for the East Texas Food Bank’s Longview Resource Center.

Admission is free, but people who plan to attend must register at PeltierFest2025.eventbrite.com to receive their free tickets. Tickets will be scanned at the gate. For each person who attends, Peltier will donate five cans of food to the food bank.

Parking will be available at Maude Cobb Convention and Activity Center, with shuttle service back and forth. Food will be sold on site, and the family friendly event will offer face painting, a bounce house and other family activities. Audience members should bring their own lawn chairs.

Bakery service expands

The Friendly Bazaar on Pine Tree Road in Longview is now offering the flavors of a well-known Henderson bakery, Panaderia El Buen Gusto.

Saray Ruiz, who runs The Friendly Bazaar with her mother, whose name is also Saray Ruiz, explained that “El Buen Gusto” means, “the good taste.”

“And it tastes good,” Ruiz said. The Henderson bakery also has a location in Kilgore that delivers to Longview daily. The Friendly Bazaar added the bakery items in a cooler in the store.

“It’s a big hit,” she said, with people traveling from Gilmer and Mount Pleasant, for instance, to buy various pastries, breads and other treats.

“They’re very well known, so people are happy,” Ruiz said.

The cooler is stocked with, among other things, “piggies,” gingerbread that is traditionally always shaped like a pig. While empanadas in America are usually filled with meat and potatoes, Ruiz said they traditionally have a sweet filling. The ones in the store’s cooler earlier this month were filled with cream cheese or pineapple filling,

Her mother started The Friendly Bazaar a few years ago, selling new and used items focusing on the Hispanic community — traditional Mexican clothes, for instance.

The store offers money sending services through a less expensive service than wiring money, she said, so people can send money to people in other countries.

The Friendly Bazaar also has added some food staples in the store as well as regional snack favorites from places such as Guatemala and other Central American countries.