Read more: 10 inventions you can thank Southerners for The Piggly Wiggly in Mountain Brook, Alabama, has a pretty extensive wine selection. And while the relentless behemoth of corporate America cast him aside, his legendary creation of the Piggly Wiggly Corporation has continued to prosper as franchiser for hundreds of independent and locally-owned grocery stores (all in the face of a saturated market of big-box stores, no less). Unfortunately, through a series of stock transactions in the early 1920s, Saunders lost control of Piggly Wiggly and had no further association with the company. (Denver Post via Getty Images)Īs shoppers in the 21st century, it’s hard to imagine a time when this format didn’t exist. This 1955 photo shows a new Piggly Wiggly store in Colorado. Design and use patented fixtures and equipment throughout the store.Put employees in uniforms for cleaner, more sanitary food handling.Use refrigerated cases to keep produce fresher longer.Feature a full line of nationally advertised brands.Give shoppers more for their food dollar through high volume/low-profit margin retailing.Check out this list of revolutionary methods first introduced by “The Pig,” according to : ![]() Chad Robertson Media / Īfter securing this self-service format, Saunders issued franchises to hundreds of grocery retailers for the operation of Piggly Wiggly stores.īut the authentic firsts don’t stop there. Read more: 30 Southern exports worthy of a thank-you cardĪ historical marker describing the beginning of Piggly Wiggly in Memphis, Tennessee. ![]() With this new concept, customers were given shopping baskets and open shelves and no longer needed clerks to shop for them. In consequence, he revolutionized the entire grocery trade and developed a way for shoppers to serve themselves.ĭespite low confidence in the industry, Saunders’ first store opened in 1916 on Jefferson Street in Memphis, Tennessee, and was unlike any other grocery store of the time. (Think general store in Little House on the Prairie.) But Saunders was known as a charismatic man with an inventive mind and resolved to update what he considered a method that wasted time and expense. ![]() (Joe Songer)īack in the early 20th century, shoppers would hand over their grocery lists to clerks who then gathered goods from the store shelves. Yeah, Piggly Wiggly seems like a simple concept, but it's actually a modern marvel. Today, it has more than 600 locations in the U.S. Case in point: Piggly Wiggly, more commonly referred to as “The Pig.” In spite of such a comical (yet endearing) store name, this Southern supermarket staple, started in Memphis by Clarence Saunders, was actually the first self-service grocery store in America. Despite the shade that sometimes gets thrown the South's way, trailblazing "firsts" are actually quite common in its history.
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