Chachi’s House—a shipping container restaurant located at The Food Zone food park—has closed.

The specifics: The restaurant served Puerto Rican and Caribbean food. Chachi’s House opened at the Food Zone in early March.

• 23020 Speed St. Unit 13, New Caney

Since January 2025, at least 12 mobile businesses or companies with nontraditional facilities—such as food trucks, mobile pet services and beverage companies—have opened, per Community Impact reporting.

At a glance: Mobile or nontraditional storefront options may be appealing to business owners because they offer lower barriers to entry, said Mark Linabury, president and CEO of the Greater East Montgomery County Chamber.

“The mind immediately goes to food [trucks],” Linabury said. “There are other opportunities out there and ... it’s such a great entrepreneurial journey, and the key is to create balance to where everyone can succeed.”

As of April 22, almost 370 food trucks alone were operating in Montgomery County, according to the county’s health department.

The cost: Linabury said mobile businesses are not unique to New Caney and Porter. However, he speculated that perhaps high pricing for commercial rent opportunities in the area draws business owners to nontraditional storefronts.

“In Porter, New Caney, I would say we don’t have an abundance of ... lower-lease, lower-rent commercial opportunities for smaller business,” Linabury said.

During the April 20-28 early voting period for the May 2 election, 21,253 voters in Montgomery County cast ballots, according to early voting turnout data from Montgomery County Elections Central. Per Montgomery County Elections Central, 473,241 voters were registered as of April 28—meaning 4.5% of eligible voters cast ballots.

Breaking it down: 18,052 of the ballots cast were in-person, and there were 3,201 mail-in ballots, according to Montgomery County Elections Central. The polling locations that had the most in-person ballots cast were the Central Library in Conroe and the Mitchell Library in The Woodlands, with 3,347 and 3,285 ballots cast, respectively.

CenterPoint Energy has made key first-quarter progress in reaching milestones tied to the company’s Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative, according to an April 17 news release from the company.

Digging deeper: Launched after Hurricane Beryl, the initiative is a multiyear effort to strengthen resilience and improve reliability for its 2.9 million electric customers, and to help build the most resilient coastal grid in the nation, according to the release. 

Quote of note: “We are proud of the progress made in 2025 which helped deliver more than 100 million fewer outage minutes when compared to 2024, and we are determined to make even more progress in 2026 as we work toward our defining goal: building the nation's most resilient coastal grid,” said Nathan Brownell, CenterPoint's vice president of Resilience and Capital Delivery, in the release.

Community Impact is reporting on the New Caney, Porter and Roman Forest area’s continued transition from a more rural region to a suburban area. Please contact Reporter Wesley Gardner at [email protected] if you’re willing to share your thoughts on the area’s transition in an interview.