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This is a simple park and grab. Mostly free of muggles, but watch for deliveries in the morning hours. Also be on the look out for pizza delivery drivers because they don't slow down much and they travel behind the store often.
Before this store was opened in 1994, it was called Hart's Market and was a staple in Branson before the shows and the glitz came to town.
Permission has been granted by Chip Robertson, Store Director
Congrats to the Taylors for the FTF
The following article appeared in the Branson Tri-Lakes Dailey, Thursday, November 17, 1994, with the caption, “End of an Era”:
Back when bacon was 21 cents a pound and the grocer knew your kid’s batting average, there was a Hart’s Super Market in town. Now, good bacon’s gone up to $2.69 a pound and, since this is Branson, the grocer probably still knows that batting average. But next Wednesday, November 24, Ray and Lola Gerard will close the doors to Hart’s Super Market for the very last time.
If you’re thinking this is another sad, but all-to-common tale of a small, locally owned business ground under by corporate competitors, you’re right…. and you’re wrong. It was a little country grocery store on Atlantic and Business 65 when Harold and Grace Hart bought it from Elven Akers in 1949. They renamed it “Hart’s” and began expanding the business. By the end of 1954, Hart’s Super Market had wandered out of its original brick building and had crept up Business 65.
Business was brisk, but Mr. Hart’s health was failing. A chain of concerned friends eventually linked the ailing businessman to a general store owner in Clever, Missouri, who was willing to relocate. A partnership was struck. Ray and Lola Gerard sold their Clever store and moved their family to Branson on New Year’s Day, 1955.
Their son, Doug, joined the family business in 1970, and the two generations of Gerard’s piloted Hart’s Super Market through 40 years of interesting time in Branson. Through the many changes that came to both the town and to Hart’s, the store always remained a small town business at heart.
From the beginning, it was a 7-day work week for the Gerard’s. If the store was closed, shelves still needed to be re-stocked, floors mopped, and vegetables trimmed and cleaned – operations that often took until midnight or later.
“Ray and I ate, slept and worked together. The only other people we ever saw,” said Lola, “were our customers. Working all those hours, the only friends we ever had were our customers. And we’re sure grateful to them for their friendship and all the support over the years.”
The family is full of stories about past friends and customers. M.B. Skaggs, founder of Safeway, loaded three or four cars on his semi-annual visits to the Ozarks. Mrs. Belt, who started the Steak and Shake chain, was another beloved seasonal customer, one who wanted the grocery clerks to personally pick her baking potatoes. And the family will never forget the woman who returned her bag of “bad” pinto beans because they had turned brown when she cooked them.
Long time employees, and there are many, come to regard their employers as family. Dale Wroblewski, head meat cutter at Hart’s, has been with the company 18 years. He said, “It’s like a family-type deal. Here you’re a person instead of a number.” Hart’s manager, Gary Fisher, agreed. “I worked for them downtown when I was in high school. I’ve been back with them for 22 years and, all I can say is, they’ve been great to work for. They kind of make you feel like part of their family.”
The Gerard’s were always the first developers in the area to relocate to underdeveloped areas that eventually get “hot”, which was good – and bad. Grocery stores are dependent on local business, and local shoppers patronize convenient locations that have easy access. “We’ve had the ability to pick ‘em,” said Ray Gerard. “But it was also an ability that the spot we picked bogged down right away.”
It wasn’t the traffic jams but the need to modernize the grocery store that led them to build a new Hart’s across the street from their old one in 1958. It was the first true supermarket in Branson, and the largest store AG (Associated Grocers), their Missouri food supplier, had.
But the day came in the mid-60s when the Gerard’s could look out their door and see cars lined up for seven miles on Business 65, before the bypass was built. So they looked west and picked a tract of land, beyond the city limits, on Highway 76. “When we built this thing,” said ray, “it was the furthest thing west. Wasn’t anything beyond us 76 but a drive-in movie and a little café.”
In October of 1965, Hart’s Super Market relocated and once again opened the most modern grocery in southwest Missouri, featuring wider aisles, automatic doors, modern checkout counters and a wider ragne of merchandise. But the day came in the ‘80s when their once-rural location was in the heart of the 76 “strip,” and traffic was once again backed up for miles. “76 killed us,” said Ray. “Traffic got so choked up, local people wouldn’t come on 76 to shop.” Doug Gerard added, “We had a survey done that showed most of the area people could get to a location in Hollister without ever having to get on 76. That was 1985, and some people thought we were crazy because there wasn’t anything out south.”
Needing a convenient location and the ability to update their services, they bought a Country Mart franchise and opened an additional store at that location in Hollister. That still left Hart’s Super Market, strangling in the traffic snarl on Highway 76. It left Hart’s in a shopping center, now surrounded by other businesses and unable to expand to meet the demands of the ‘90s.
Several years ago, upon discovering where Epps Road was going to (someday) intersect Missouri Highway 248, they bought a tract of land for their next grocery store. It will open December 29 of this year – but it will not be Hart’s Super Market.
The Gerard’s will go on, being joined by the third generation this winter. Many of their employees will go with them. Hart’s Super Market will eventually fade from the collective conscience of local food buyers.
“It’s the end of an era,”sighed Lola Gerard. “The end of Hart’s in Branson.” “The straight, conventional grocery store in the United States is history,” said Doug, “and that’s what this store is. Most of them just don’t last 40 years.”
Additional Hints
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