GRAVETTE (KFSM) -- Gravette was left without a grocery store after Walmart decided to shut down dozens of its small-format stores, but they now have a new Harps.
"I came at 8:30 for the opening...I didn`t know it wasn`t until 9:30. So that was how excited I was here an hour early,” Paulette Austin said.
Paulette Austin has been waiting for this moment for months after the Walmart express closed at the end of January.
“I`ve liked Harps for a long time," Austin said. "They`ve got good quality produce, their meats, everything is top notch with Harps...So, and you can talk to people, they`re friendly, they...if they see you looking at the shelf they`ll come up and say what do you need, what can I help you find.”
This store and several others the company plans to turn into grocery stories are smaller than your typical Harps, but they still have all the essentials.
"It's a very big variety, the things that the Walmart express didn`t have that I would have to go to the supercenter for they had in here. So yeah I was really pleased,” Beth Patton said.
Another big plus for a lot of customers is that they don't have to drive out of town to get their groceries.
“I`m terribly excited because we`ve been without a store for so long and my mother is disabled," Pauline Adams said. "So I have to stay with her most of the time and it`s very difficult to go somewhere and leave her for a long period of time.”
The Harps in Gravette does have a gas station, but no pharmacy.
Harps also plans to reopen the former Walmart Express in Cedarville early next month.