♪♪ [Tom Mulholland] Malvern is an old town, 150 years old.

♪♪ [Tom Mulholland] Rolling hills all around it.

30 miles from the Missouri River and the border, we're 30 miles from the state of Missouri.

It's a beautiful small town but we're close enough to the city, to Omaha.

♪♪ [Tom Mulholland] We've got a lot of good things going on in this community.

And that's one of the reasons why it was so important to rebuild my grocery store after the fire.

♪♪ (fire engine sirens) [Tom Mulholland] I had gone home about 5:15 that evening and 15 minutes later one of my employees called.

I hadn't even taken my coat off.

I was just sitting in my chair relaxing.

And one of my employees called and said, you've got to get back down here, the store is on fire.

And I ran in the front door and I opened the door to the back room and I couldn't even see my hand this far in front of my face, the smoke was so thick and black.

♪♪ [Tom Mulholland] There were 27 fire departments that showed up that night to help fight the fire from all the little towns.

There were farmers that were bringing water in tank wagons and things.

The fire continued for hours.

♪♪ [Nebbe] Mulholland Grocery could not be saved.

The store was gutted and two days later high winds knocked down the only brick wall left standing.

The store had been a fixture in Malvern for generations and because it was the only grocery store in town, the loss was felt immediately.

♪♪ [Tom Mulholland] My great-grandfather started this store with a partner as a dry goods store back in 1875.

It used to have everything that you needed because people didn't commute to Omaha.

♪♪ [Tom Mulholland] When I was young there were four grocery stores here.

There was one right across the street, there was one down the street, there was one up on top of the hill.

You know, and now for three years there was nothing here.

So, people's diets changed.

People were buying, maybe going shopping every few weeks or once a month or something like that, relying more on boxed goods, relying more on canned goods instead of fresh products.

You couldn't get any fresh meat, any fresh produce or vegetables.

It took me about a month to decide that yes, I was going to rebuild.

♪♪ [Tom Mulholland] There were so many people that were doing whatever they could to help support me and to show me that they were going to be there, that I knew that's what I had to do.

It was very difficult at times.

But then there were also so many good things that happened.

♪♪ [Tom Mulholland] My store is smaller than what I had before, but the space is laid out much better, more efficiently.

We've got new equipment instead of the old equipment that we had.

So, there's a lot of things that are better.

My utility bills are half of what they were before the fire.

♪♪ [Tom Mulholland] I started cutting meat in my dad's store, his partner's store, when I was eighteen.

I'm known a lot for the sausages that we make.

I make potato sausages, Swedish Potatis Korv that people drive 3 hours for to pick up every year from Ames.

I'll tell people on Facebook that we just made a batch, which is about 28 pounds or so.

It doesn't make it through the day.

This little tiny story has sold over 600 pounds of ham salad since we opened.

You know, and I'm out at the moment.

It helps the rest of the store too.

I say, people may be coming in for the meats, but they're going to grab a head of lettuce, they're going to grab a gallon of milk while they're in here, and that helps turn those things over faster and helps improve our purchase power.

But it doesn't just help me.

They stop at other businesses and tell their friends about what they found in Malvern.

♪♪ [Donna Miller] The day they opened I walked in and went, yes, because it was so amazing to have them back, to know that instead of having to get in the car if you forgot something and run a distance, you could just come up here.

But I think the biggest thing is all of a sudden Malvern is complete again.

We have our own grocery store and it makes a town a town.

♪♪ [Tom Mulholland] I've had so many people that have donated to try to help us and to get us to where we are.

I still went into debt three-quarters of a million dollars to get this store open.

But I did this because the community needs it and because I love the community so much.

♪♪ [Tom Mulholland] I want this store to be here for the next generation, for the next 20 or 30 years, for this community because it's important.

People don't want to move to a small town that doesn't have a grocery store.

But one of the other things is that small businesses feed off of each other and it's important to be here.

♪♪