Little North Fork Country Store and restaurant opens in Thornfield
The Little North Fork Country Store on Highway 95 in Thornfield opened its doors to the public last week, and owner David Siefker says he’s excited about bringing the store back to life.
In addition to gas, groceries, beer, wine and liquor and regular convenience store offerings, the store will feature hot, cooked-to-order meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The store will open at 6 a.m. Monday through Saturday with breakfast and lunch specials daily. It’ll also offer made-to-order cheeseburgers, deli items and other hot meals.
Dinner specials including homemade stone-oven baked pizzas and a variety of smoked barbecue items will be offered on Friday and Saturday nights, when the store stays open until 8:30 p.m. On Monday through Thursday, it closes at 6 p.m.
Store hours on Sunday will be 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday brunch is offered from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Homemade pies, baked by Desirae Parry, will be baked fresh daily, along with fresh breads, cookies and large homemade cinnamon rolls.
For more information, call the store at 417-265-1112.
A historic past
The opening of the Little North Fork Country Store is a much-anticipated event, considering the town’s absence of a store for the last three years since the closing of Heriford’s Store, which operated in the same building by owners Juanita and Kenny Heriford from 2007 to February 2019.
The store building was built in 1968 by the late Hervil Gaulding and his wife, Virginia Heriford Gaulding. A few years earlier, the Gauldings had bought the store across the street from Chet and Toni Watson. Soon they opted to move from that store building into a new building they constructed on the opposite side of Highway 95. Chester Lyday, then the carpentry instructor at Gainesville High School, laid the concrete blocks for the building.
After five or six years, the Gauldings sold the store to Virginia’s brother and his wife, John and Barbara Heriford. Greg Donley, former Ozark County western district commissioner, leased the store for a while. Finally, it was sold to John Heriford’s distant cousin, Kenny Heriford and his wife Juanita, who operated the store in recent years with her granddaughter. Kenny Heriford also has an excavating business.