Grocery stores busy, mostly back in gear

TEXARKANA — While many area grocery stores are open, they may not be keeping their usual hours and they may not have everything you want on store shelves.

Managers and employees at area grocery stores have had a tough time staying open as icy road conditions have meant some staff simply can’t get to work. Shayde Cook, a management team member at Walmart Supercenter on New Boston Road in Texarkana, Texas, said Thursday morning the store is staffed with fewer than 20 associates and leaders when the normal staffing level for that store is approximately 200 to 250 employees on site at a time.

“It’s a skeleton crew. We have run out of some things but we’ve gotten some deliveries,” Cook said. “We got some produce today and are trying to restock meat as well. We also got a general merchandise truck.”

Cody Stout, a manager at Super One Foods on Richmond Road in Texarkana, Texas, said Thursday his store hasn’t seen a delivery truck since last weekend just before the storm plunged the area into a wintry deep freeze.

“There’s not much perishable left but I think when things get rolling again in the next few days things will get back to normal,” Stout said.

Stout said his store was shuttered Wednesday as not enough staff could make it.

An employee who

answered the phone at Albertsons on State Line Avenue in Texarkana, Arkansas, said the store is open though shoppers might find some staples, such as milk, unavailable.

“Customers are just buying whatever they can find,” the Albertsons employee said.

Walmart’s website is hosting a map that shows which of its stores, gas stations and warehouses are

closed or open. Wednesday the site showed Sam’s Warehouse on Richmond Road in Texarkana, Texas, was closed but that changed by mid-morning Thursday.

Supercenters on both sides of Texarkana are open as are Walmart Supercenters in Ashdown, Arkansas, and New Boston, Texas.

This story is developing and will be updated.