Sneedville — A grocery store that's been a Hancock County community mainstay for years is changing hands.
Greene's IGA Supermarket is a Sneedville staple. Its last day open under current owners is Saturday.
Customers are hoping the new owners will keep selling groceries.
"They have like other, little other country stores and stuff down here, but it's not you know, the grocery store," said customer Christy Wilder. "We're average here a couple of times a week, probably."
Greene's IGA store has grown into the fabric of the Sneedville family. It's been around for more than 30 years.
"I like it," customer Tom Levesay said. "They're nice to me in there, and I like the people in there. You know, I know a lot of them in there, and I like them."
New owners are taking over the long-time family-owned store, and that has some regular customers like Levesay and Wilder concerned.
"Well I hope somebody gets it that will keep it as a store, because that's the only one we've really got in town," Levesay said.
Wilder says people would have to go to Rogersville or Tazewell to shop. That's nearly 45 minutes to Rogersville, or about 37 minutes to Tazewell.
"We're about 30 or 40 miles from the nearest town—Walmart, Morristown or Rogersville or Tazewell," Chamber of Commerce President Michael Gibson said. "So it's really very vital to our community that we have a really good grocery store."
But there is hope that the new ownership will just mean new life for the store.
"It looks like some of the people that are looking to buy it have some previous grocery store experience, so we're thinking it's going to be maybe not a smooth transition, but a transition and it will be business as usual. That's what we're hoping," Gibson said.
And that's what the customers are hoping too.