The first self-service grocery store opens in Memphis, Tennessee - September 6th, 1916

On this day in 1916, entrepreneur Clarence Saunders opened the Piggly Wiggly, the first self-service grocery store in the United States.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that searches the aisles of history to bring
you a new story every day. I'm Gabe Lousier and

(00:21):
in this episode, we're talking about the rise of the
American grocery store, including wi It's retail model was such
a game changer for shoppers. The day was September six,
nineteen sixteen. Entrepreneur Clarence Saunders opened the Piggly Wiggly, the

(00:46):
first self service grocery store in the United States. The
roots of modern American grocery stores lie in the small
regional chains that started cropping up in the early twentieth century.
These early locations were much smaller than what most shoppers
are used to, typically less than a thousand square feet,

(01:06):
and that means they stocked many fewer products as well.
In fact, stores of the era carried only one type
of grocery, dry goods. That means there was no produce, meat,
or dairy, only things like canned goods, spices, and other
non perishable items. At the time, customers still had to

(01:27):
visit a number of separate specialty shops to get every
item on their list. So after heading to the grocery
store for your dry goods, you'd stop off at a
butcher shop for your meat, a green grocer for your produce,
a creamery for your milk and butter, and so on.
Under this system, grocery shopping was kind of an all
day affair, but for a long time there wasn't any

(01:50):
other option. The one stop shops supermarkets you find today
weren't really a possibility until the advent of things like
refrigeration and the National Highway system. Still, that's not to
say there weren't plenty of grocery innovations in the meantime,
and one of the biggest shake ups of the era
came in nineteen sixteen when a wholesale grocer named Clarence

(02:11):
Saunders opened his first Piggly Wiggly store at seventy nine
Jefferson Street in Memphis, Tennessee. Saunders store was special because
it introduced America to the idea of self service shopping.
It's strange to think about now, but old school grocery
stores were set up to have the clerks do all
the shopping for you. Customers would hand over a list

(02:34):
of all the items they wanted, and then one of
the employees would move from shelf to shelf, bagging up
the different items as they went. However, in saunders new
do it yourself store, the customers collected their items themselves
for the first time. Of course, after a lifetime of
being waited on. Not everyone appreciated this new independent approach

(02:55):
to shopping. There were even reports of confused customers flagging
down stock boys to go fetch items for them, only
to be told that wasn't how things worked at the
Piggy Wiggly. There was a bit of a learning curve
to be sure, but overall people took to the new
self service style pretty well. A big reason for that
quick adoption was how much faster the d I Y

(03:18):
system was once people got to know the layout of
the store, and of course, it also helped that prices
at the Piggly Wiggly were considerably lower than those of
traditional dry goods stores since it didn't have to employ
an army of clerks to help the customers. Now you
might assume from the name that Piggy Wiggly was also

(03:38):
the first grocery store to add a meat department to
the mix, or at the very least a Delhi. But
that's not the case. Despite Piggy Wiggly's more modern approach
to shopping, it was still just a dry goods grocery store.
So what's with the name, Well, it's honestly kind of
a mystery. Clarence Saunders was oddly reluctant to explain where

(04:00):
the name came from. In one version of events, he
came up with a rhyming name while watching a group
of small pigs try to squirm their way under a fence. However,
on another occasion, someone asked Saunders why he chose such
a strange name, and his response was so people will
ask that very question. If that's true, then the name

(04:21):
was more about creating a memorable brand than anything else,
which seems appropriate when you consider that saunders new approach
to groceries was basically the dawn of branding. In general.
Customers were no longer kept at a distance from the
products they were buying. All of a sudden, they had
more decision making power than ever before, and food companies

(04:43):
definitely took notice of that change. Around the nineteen twenties,
they started placing a much larger emphasis on packaging and
taglines and mascots, all the new ways that companies came
up with to make their products stand out from the
competition and better grab the customers attention. Clarence Saunders got
into that kind of supermarket psychology as well. Because his

(05:06):
customers were free to wander and shop for themselves, he
had to think carefully about the appearance and layout of
his store. This led to the addition of all kinds
of modern staples, like employee uniforms so customers could identify
who worked there, and shopping baskets so they could carry
and ultimately purchase more items at once. The baskets were

(05:28):
made of wood in those days, not plastic. Due to
its self service style, Piggy Wiggly was also the first
grocery store to provide checkout stands and to put a
price label on every item in the store. To be clear, though,
while many of these breakthroughs are accredited to Saunders and
the Piggly Wiggly, that doesn't mean some of the same ideas,

(05:49):
like shopping baskets and self service weren't being experimented with
by other stores around the same time. It's a tough
thing to pin down precisely, but if nothing else, the
tie timeline does support Piggy Wiggli's claim as the first
modern grocery store, at least when it comes to offering
self service. In the end, customers responded so strongly to

(06:11):
the store that within a year of its opening, there
were a total of nine Piggy Wiggly locations in the
Memphis area. As the company grew and distribution improved, new
types of products were added to the shelves, including the
elusive produce meat and dairy. These additions transformed Piggy Wiggly
into a full fledged supermarket, one of the very first

(06:34):
of its kind. Clarence Saunders was so pleased with his
store's success that he actually made a lofty prediction to
the people of his hometown. He said, quote, one day
Memphis shall be proud of Piggy Wiggly, and it shall
be said by all men that the Pigley Wigglies shall
multiply and replenish the earth with more and cleaner things

(06:56):
to eat. I can't vouch for all of that, but
the company is still going strong today. As of twenty
twenty two, there are more than five hundred Piggy Wiggly
stores spread across nineteen different states. So in that sense,
I'd say Saunders was right. He left Memphis with plenty
to be proud of. I'm gay, bluesier, and hopefully you

(07:21):
now know a little more about history today than you
did yesterday. If you have a second and you're so inclined,
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(07:41):
heart media dot com. Thanks, as always the Chandler Mays
for producing the show, and thanks to you for listening.
I'll see you back here again tomorrow for another day
in History class.