Harps to add 170 jobs as it reopens four former Walmart Express stores in coming weeks

Springdale-based Harps Food Stores said four of the nine Walmart Express stores it purchased are being readied for opening under the Harps banner beginning August 3. Job fairs will be held in the coming days as the company plans to hire 170 workers to staff the stores located in Western Arkansas and Southern Missouri.

No financial terms of the deal were released, but Harps said the purchase included the equipment in the stores, some of which will be used at other facilities. Harps said it chose to acquire all nine stores, despite the fact it has no plans to open at three of the former Walmart locations because buying all nine of the stores made their offer more attractive to Walmart. Shuttered Express stores in Arkansas not in the deal are in Coal Hill, Damascus, Decatur and Mulberry.

Harps first announced plans to acquire the former Walmart Express stores earlier this month.

NORTHWEST ARKANSAS
On August 3rd, the store in Gravette will reopen as a Harps. This store will sell fuel, but will not have a pharmacy, according to J. Max Van Hoose, vice president of store planning for Harps. A job fair is planned for Saturday (June 25) for hiring in the Gravette community.

Also in Northwest Arkansas, Van Hoose said Walmart did purchase the Walmart Express store in Gentry, but has no plans to reopen in that location. He said the former Walmart store will be marketed for resale because the grocery store chain has already committed to a $3 million store in that city. Harps purchased a 30,000 square foot building at the northeast intersections of Highways 59 and 12 in April and is in the process of remodeling 23,000 square feet of the space into a Harps conventional grocery store equipped with a bakery, deli, produce and meat departments. The store in Gentry is slated to open Sept. 21. The company said O’Reilly Auto Parts occupies the rest of the 30,000 square foot building in Gentry. A job fair is slated for the Gentry store on Aug. 20 at a location to be announced later.

In Prairie Grove, Harps said it recently completed a $1 million remodel of its existing store located at 319 East Buchanan Street. As a result, Harps said it will not reopen the former Walmart Express, but will market that property for sale.

RIVER VALLEY
Harps also acquired former Walmart Express stores in Mansfield, Cedarville and Charleston. Van Hoose only shared plans for the Cedarville location at this time. He said the Cedarville store will open on Sept. 7 and will also sell fuel. The store will not have a pharmacy. Harps has planned a job fair for Aug. 6 in connection to hiring for the Cedarville store.

Van Hoose said Harps has not yet determined what to do with the former Walmart Express stores it purchased in Mansfield and Charleston.

SOUTHWEST MISSOURI
Three of the stores Harps purchased from Walmart are in Southwest Missouri, but only two of them have been slated for reopening at this time. In Anderson, Mo., the store is slated to reopen on Aug. 24. In Seligman, that store is slated to open Aug. 10. Both stores will sell fuel and there will be job fairs on July 9 in Seligman and July 23 in Anderson in connection with staffing these two new stores.

In Noel, Van Hoose said Harps is in the process of finalizing remodel plans on its existing store located at 210 West Main Street. The project will begin this summer and completion is expected in the fall. He said the store will stay open during the remodel and the former Walmart Express store will be sold.

RIPE OPPORTUNITY
Harps is a 100% employee-owned company and operates 79 stores in northern and central Arkansas, southern Missouri and eastern Oklahoma. The regional grocer has managed to carve a niche market in Walmart’s backyard. Snapping up the former Walmart Express sites is an opportunity for Harps to expand its brand further in communities where Walmart gave up.

Walmart announced it would shutter all 102 of its smallest Express grocery formats in late January saying it no longer fit the retail giant’s expansion plans. The stores are typically around 10,000 square-feet and they employed roughly 60 people for each location.

Analysts agreed that the small formats did not make sense for Walmart whose profits are driven largely from the supercenter, noting that Walmart does “big” well, but “small” is not their game.

Walmart thought its Express stores could compete with the Dollar Stores in small towns, but clearly the format wasn’t pulling its own weight, said Jason Long, CEO of Shift Marketing Group in St. Louis.