BELLA VISTA, Ark — An Internet craze and one Georgia woman have made meatloaf the star of the Bella Vista Harps Deli.
Stephanie DeMilio moved from Jesup, Georgia to Northwest Arkansas following her little sister.
"The only reason I'm working at Harps is because I don't have to use my GPS to get here anywhere else I go. I have to use my GPS because I'm from Georgia. And we don't know nothing about these Oklahoma and Missouri and Arkansas hills," DeMilio said.
DeMilio currently works as a deli clerk at Harps. Before her time in Northwest Arkansas, DeMilio was a deputy sheriff in Chatham County, Georgia, and even a bartender at one point.
"She's a Georgian, for sure. She's loud but very enjoyable," store manager Heidi Mullikin said.
Her coworkers said DeMilio adds an exciting element to work.
"We're doing our jobs and we're working, but we're still having fun. And she makes it like that," deli manager Donna Kier expressed.
DeMilio is in charge of the meatloaves sold in the deli. While she's made some small changes, they're still the regular recipe of the Martha Harps Meatloaf. Since she started manning the meatloaves, one man sparked Internet beef that eventually turned into a recipe for community support.
"I had a man that said something about it. He said I was pocketing the money from the meatloaf, which I'm just an hourly employee. I don't know how I could pocket the money," DeMilio said. "He helped me tremendously because it went crazy over that. It went totally crazy. And everybody started. Every other word was meatloaf, meatloaf. How's the weather today? meatloaf."
DeMilio received the name "The Meatloaf Lady" from her Internet fans. As of March 10, nearly 2,000 people have followed her Facebook group, waiting for the chance to meet her.
"I would look out here, and there would be people lined up saying, 'Where's the meatloaf?'" DeMilio said.
Nancy Johnson stopped by the store to buy her family meatloaf from DeMilio. She said her husband had previously stopped by and was too late for the meatloaf rush.
"When he came in, she had just sold the 39th [meatloaf], and he was devastated," Johnson said. "So that's when he said, 'Oh, why didn't you make 40?' And she didn't laugh as I recall."
Harps management told 5NEWS that she averages 850 meatloaves a month. Her fame grew so much that people even started showing up to receive a meatloaf lady-signed meatloaf.
"I think it's crazy. I mean, you think it's just meatloaf," Mullikin said.
DeMilio says she takes off Wednesdays and Thursdays because, unlike Georgia, casinos are nearby and they're "calling my name."
"I try to just be the life of the party and have fun all the time. Why not have fun? We don't know that we're promised tomorrow," DeMilio said.
You can join DeMillio's Facebook group where she updates fans when meatloaves are ready and posts photos with her meatloaf-crazed fans.
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