Arkansas town again has grocery store; after 6 months without one, residents relish new Harps

Charlene and Jerry Yingst shop with their grandson Jaxon Blakeslee on Wednesday at the Harps Food Store in Gravette. The store, formerly a Wal-Mart Express, reopened Wednesday.
Charlene and Jerry Yingst shop with their grandson Jaxon Blakeslee on Wednesday at the Harps Food Store in Gravette. The store, formerly a Wal-Mart Express, reopened Wednesday.

GRAVETTE -- Elizabeth Humphrey's grocery shopping trips took much longer after the Wal-Mart Express store in her hometown closed in January.

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NWA Democrat-Gazette

Matt Edmisten stocks broccoli Wednesday at the Harps Food Store in Gravette. Edmisten also worked at the store when it was a Wal-Mart Express.

She routinely had to load her three kids into the car, take her mother along to help and make the 20-minute drive to either Bentonville or Siloam Springs.

Round trip, her shopping typically took two hours or more.

So, Humphrey was happy Wednesday morning as she pushed her cart through the aisles of the new Harps Food Store in Gravette.

"This is amazing," Humphrey said. "It's so much more convenient."

Other residents of the Northwest Arkansas town felt the same way as they flocked Wednesday -- grand-opening day -- to the store off Arkansas 59.

Harps announced in June that it had purchased nine former Wal-Mart Express Stores in Arkansas and Missouri that the Bentonville-based retailer had closed. The list included the Gravette store, which now is the first to reopen under its new owners.

Officials -- including Harps President Kim Eskew and Gravette Mayor Kurt Maddox -- along with local police officers and firefighters, and a crowd of residents -- attended Wednesday's ribbon-cutting ceremony, ending the six-month stretch in which the Benton County two had no local grocery store.

Eskew told the crowd that the Springdale-based grocery chain -- which operates 80 stores in Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma -- believes it should have a store in every community in Northwest Arkansas. He was happy to now check Gravette off his list.

"Having no grocery store can kill a town," said Matthew Edmisten, a Gravette resident who works in the produce department at the Harps store. "We have one again, and it's a good one."

Edmisten, 26, worked at the store when it was a Wal-Mart Express. The retailer ended his employment there two months before the express store officially closed.

He said people in the town were surprised when Wal-Mart announced that it was closing 269 stores worldwide, including 154 in the U.S as part of its push to streamline its operations.

Most of the U.S closings were smaller-format stores known as Wal-Mart Express stores. Those stores averaged 12,000 square feet and were part of a pilot program that began in 2011.

Gravette was one of 11 Arkansas communities affected by Wal-Mart's closures decision. Not only did it leave residents with nowhere to grocery shop, it resulted in the loss of local jobs and sales tax revenue.

"I had just given the State of the City address and told everybody just how great 2015 was and we had the best year ever," Maddox said. "The city was doing great and looking up. The next morning, I walked into City Hall and got a call saying we are closing down this grocery store in two weeks."

Maddox said he and other city officials began working on a solution as soon as Wal-Mart announced the Gravette store's closure, but the problem couldn't be solved overnight.

With the Wal-Mart Express store closed, residents were able to pick up essentials like milk and eggs at a nearby Dollar General store, but the selection was smaller and that store didn't carry fresh produce. A local farmers market tried to fill the void, as well.

But most residents like Jerry and Charlene Yingst had to go elsewhere for most of their groceries.

"It's hard to do without a grocery store," said Charlene Yingst, who said she and her husband often drove 20 minutes to Bentonville to buy groceries. "It's inconvenient when you need a bag of sugar or a dozen eggs and can't get it. Dollar General tried to do what they could do, but couldn't keep up."

Maddox said Gravette officials met with representatives from several grocery store chains. Eventually, the city was able to announce that CV's Family Foods would build a store in the town. It is scheduled to open later this year. Also, Harps finalized the nine-store deal with Wal-Mart to acquire the closed Gravette store.

The new Harps store, which has about 35 employees, provided drinks, slices of cake and other items to shoppers as they walked inside Wednesday. Aisles filled with customers, and lines formed at the checkouts' cash registers.

At the grand-opening ceremony a few minutes earlier, Eskew had told the crowd that he had two fears about grand-openings -- either that no one would show up or that everyone in town would show up, making it hard for store workers to serve each customer the way Harps likes to do it. But, as he looked out over the large crowd in Gravette, Eskew quickly added that he preferred the latter.

"The loss of a grocery store was devastating to the city," Maddox said. "You can tell by the number of people who showed up today, this is a big deal. We're excited to have the store back open."

Business on 08/04/2016

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