GRAVETTE — Harps Foods opened its new store in Gravette on Wednesday morning and business was good. The store opened at 10 a.m. and the parking lot remained full to near-full all day.
Store hours will be from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days per week. The new store features a full line of groceries and has fuel pumps, as well. The store does not include a pharmacy.
Jason Parker is the new store’s manager and Andrew Bates is the grocery manager. Justin Smith is the market manager and Ronda Griggs is the produce manager. Shauna Sales is the GMD manager.
The new grocery store, located at 801 First Ave., S.E., is now the only grocery store open in Gravette, which lost its grocery store when the Walmart Express store at the same location closed earlier this year. A second store, CV Family Foods, is being built on the site of the old Marvin’s Foods store in Gravette, with a targeted opening date later this year. The Marvin's Foods store closed in the spring of 2014.
The Walmart Express store opened on Aug. 31, 2011, and closed in the end of January, 2016. The purchase of the building was announced by Harps in a June 8 press release. Harps purchased nine former Walmart Express stores. Arkansas stores in the deal were Gravette, Gentry, Prairie Grove, Cedarville, Mansfield and Charleston. The Missouri stores were in Anderson, Seligman and Noel. The Decatur Neighborhood Market store which was also closed was not included in the Harps’ purchase.
On June 23, Harps Food Stores announced plans to open stores in four of the nine recently-acquired Walmart Express stores, including plans to reopen the Gravette store as a Harps Food Store on Aug. 3. Other stores to reopen were in Cedarville, Anderson (Mo.) and Seligman (Mo.). Opening dates in the other former Express stores were: Seligman, Aug. 10; Anderson, Aug. 24; and Cedarville, Sept. 7.
According to J. Max Van Hoose, vice president of store planning for Harps, the company does not plan to reopen the Walmart Express store location in Gentry as a grocery store since it is already renovating another larger store location in Gentry. That new Gentry store is scheduled to open on Sept. 21.
Van Hoose said the new Gentry Harps’ location is on schedule to open the latter part of September. Renovation work is currently underway at the store which used to be a Marvin’s Foods Store. The Harps Food Store in Gentry will be located in the 30,000-square-foot building recently acquired by Harps at the northeast corner of the Arkansas Highways 12 and 59 intersection. O’Reilly Auto Parts occupies approximately 7,000 square feet of the building, and the remaining 23,000 square feet are currently being remodeled and renovated to be home to the new Gentry Harps Food store.
“This $3 million project is expected to be complete, and the store open, on September 21, 2016,” a Harps press release stated. “This will be a conventional grocery store that will include a bakery, deli, produce and meat departments,” the release said.
The Gentry location is being “completely remodeled,” Van Hoose said. “It will basically be a new store,” he added.
The June 23 release also said the former Walmart Express location in Gentry will not be reopened but will be marketed for sale.
The same is true of the former Walmart Express stores in Prairie Grove and in Noel, Mo. Harps recently completed a $1 million-plus remodel to its existing facility on East Buchanan Street in Prairie Grove, and Harps is finalizing plans for a remodel to its existing facility on West Main Street in Noel, Mo., according to the release.
No pharmacies are planned in any of the nine former Walmart Express locations, according to the release. Fuel will be sold in Gravette, Cedarville, Seligman and Anderson. No fuel will be sold at the Gentry location, the release states.
With the building purchases came much equipment inside the stores, and Harps did plan to use some of the fixtures and equipment from the closed stores in other store locations, the release stated.
Though Harps did not intend to reopen stores in all the former Express stores, the combined purchase made the company’s purchase offer more appealing, the release states.
“We recognized that the larger portfolio we were willing to acquire, the more attractive our proposal,” the release stated.
With the new store openings, Harps plans to hire a good number of new associates to staff the stores.
“We anticipate approximately 170 associates are needed to staff the stores in Gravette, Cedarville, Gentry, Seligman and Anderson,” Van Hoose said. “The process for filling these positions is beginning immediately. Interested applicants can apply online at HarpsCareers.com.”
A job fair is planned on Saturday, August 20, in Gentry, with the location and times yet to be announced.