Harps Expands Gas Stations

Harps Food Stores Inc. plans to continue to roll out its gas station format at a new store in Rogers and to its existing store on Grand Avenue in Fort Smith.
The Springdale-based grocer already has gas stations at stores in east Springdale, Har-Ber Meadows in west Springdale, on Wedington Drive in Fayetteville, in Hot Springs and in Fort Gibson, Okla.
Harps offers discounts on gas from two cents to seven cents per gallon up to 15 gallons when customers buy certain items in the store ranging from staples like paper towels or dish detergent to new item offerings like Wolfgang Puck pizzas or Tide detergent pens.
There is no limit on the discount a customer can accumulate and one could theoretically get the price of gas down to a penny a gallon. With rising gas prices, executive vice president Kim Eskew said the format is working.
“It’s been very successful,” he said. “I don’t understand why it wouldn’t appeal to everybody, frankly, because you can save some significant money on your gas.
“We’ve had people save a dollar a gallon. You have to buy groceries anyway. If, in your regular expenditures, you can save even 10 or 20 cents a gallon, to me, why wouldn’t you want to do that?”