Denton’s two Piggly Wiggly grocery stores are believed to be the last ones operating under that name in Texas.

And after June 13, they’ll be gone.

DRC/Candace Carlisle

Lynda and Stu McCasland look for bargains on fresh produce and other staples Wednesday at the Piggly Wiggly store on Sherman Drive.

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About 46 full- and part-time store employees were told Tuesday the stores were closing, despite a last-ditch effort to save them, said Chris Gibson, store manager of the Sherman Drive location.

“A man attempted to buy the store after the old owners filed bankruptcy, but it’s tied up,” Gibson said.

That man, Dennis Dvoracek, is a management employee who wanted to buy the stores from the owner, which filed for bankruptcy last month, he said.

But financing couldn’t keep up with a fast drop-dead date to purchase the buildings in less than two weeks, Dvoracek said.

The two stores, located on Sherman Drive and East McKinney Street, are valued at nearly $2 million, according to the Denton Central Appraisal District.

“It’s sadder for them [employees] than it is for me,” Dvoracek said. “There’s no way to get everything [financing] finished in time. It wasn’t a matter of the banking.”

Dvoracek said he started working at the Sherman Drive store after finishing high school and has spent 29 years working his way up to management.

The store-closing deadline was irritating to employees, many with decades of service, because the application process for summer jobs is over for most retail stores, Gibson said.

“It’s needless … there’s no reason for it — to shut it down,” he said. “We had the financing in hand and the warehouse situated. We were ready to go.”

Produce manager Larry Arnett has worked at Piggly Wiggly for 35 years and said he didn’t know what he’d do now that he’s jobless.

The closing of the stores, which are a staple in Denton, is heartbreaking, said Chuck Carpenter, president of the Denton Chamber of Commerce.

“It saddened me,” he said. “All of our chamber guys will tell you it made Denton genuinely special.”

The Texas stores are owned by Affiliated Foods Southwest Inc., which has its headquarters in Little Rock, Ark.

The company filed “liquidating Chapter 11” bankruptcy last month, according to a news release.

A spokesman did not return phone calls for comment Wednesday afternoon, but the Denton stores were the only two remaining from the five Texas stores listed on the Piggly Wiggly Web site.

The Stephenville and Sulphur Springs locations were liquidated on Saturday, and the Clarksville store is now owned and operated by Rehkopf’s Family Food Stores in Clarksville, according to Clarksville store manager Kevin Black.

Other Piggly Wiggly stores not owned by Affiliated Foods Southwest will not be affected by the liquidation.

Mike Winters, assistant manager of the Sherman Drive store, said the move for liquidation reflected the troubled economic times and the loss of competition would ultimately hurt consumers.

The community will lose out on the quality of Piggly Wiggly products and the personal contact, said longtime customer Mick Gosson.

Gosson said he has been shopping at the store on Sherman Drive for three decades and said he can’t get the same quality sausage at any other store.

And it’s not just the quality sausage — it’s a community that comes together at the small grocery store that customers are unable to get elsewhere, Gosson said.

“It’s a loss of a small-town chain where people come together to talk. That’s too bad,” he said. “You lose something like this and you lose a piece of society.”

Staff writer Karina Ramírez contributed to this report.

CANDACE CARLISLE can be reached at 940-566-6889. Her e-mail address is ccarlisle@dentonrc.com .