October 24, 2025 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, when Clarence Saunders opened Piggly Wiggly in 1916, shoppers in Memphis, Tennessee, didn’t know what to make of it. Until then, groceries were ordered at a counter while a clerk gathered every item. Saunders told customers to do something new: take a basket, walk the aisles, and choose for themselves. It was the first self-service grocery store, and it changed everything about the way Americans shop. Mike Freeman, author of Clarence Saunders & the Founding of Piggly Wiggly: The Rise and Fall of a Memphis Maverick, shares the story of how one man’s bold experiment became the blueprint for the modern supermarket.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue here with our American stories scrabbing a basket.
While grocery shopping may seem second nature today, but the
idea was once groundbreaking, and that was far from the
only thing that changed when Pigley Wiggley, the first modern
American supermarket, opened over one hundred years ago. On September six,
(00:30):
nineteen sixteen, hundreds of curious shoppers came out for the
opening of a new grocery store at seventy nine Jefferson
Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee, and we broadcast here in Oxford, Mississippi.
Memphis is only one hour practically due north. For weeks
they'd seen billboards and read newspaper ads about this grocery
store with the funny name that promised an entirely new
(00:53):
shopping experience, one that would, according to its owner, forever
change the retail grocery business. Greg Hangler sat down with
Mike Freeman. You're the location of that first Piggley Wiggily
in downtown Memphis. Mike Freeman is the author of Clarence
Saunders and the Founding of Piggy Wiggily, The Rise and
Fall of a Memphis maverick.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
I took a job at a restaurant downtown Memphis that
happened to be at seventy nine Jefferson and that was
the first location of the Pigmywiggley store.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
It was an interesting fact though I became interested in that.
My employer wanted me to do some research because he
was curious as well. You know what happened in the building.
It's such.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
It's important to know what Saunders did differently was in
the old days, if you went into a store to shop,
you couldn't just reach out and pick out your own grocery.
You had the clerks do that for you. So you
had to wait for them to you tell the clark
what you wanted, then they would bring it to you.
And Saunders thought, well, this is really slow, this is
(01:57):
so inefficient. And all this tied in with Rand advertised.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Before the tournament Satuy.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
He had all these brands we still recognized, Kellogg Cereal,
Van Camp, Pork and Beans. All these companies were selling
their products and stores and Saunders knew, well, you don't
need a clerk to tell you what cereal you like?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
You like Kellogg Cereal, there it is, you get it yourself.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
Most important thing to him is I could sell more groceries,
less costs, I pay fewer people.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Saunders grew up from a family that was poor.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
In fact, there's one story that a neighbor bought Clarens
a pair of shoes, and then when Saunders had money
later in life, he who sent a check to that
family for a number of years because they helped him
out and then he really needed it. So he knew
what it was like to suffer you're to living hardship,
(02:57):
and he carried that with him, you know, he that
probably motivated him as much as he sings to do something.
Saunders became a traveling salesman for wholesale company, so he
would call upon grocers and Saunders developed a reputation from
being a bit brash. He would go into a store
(03:18):
and he would tell the store owner says, you know,
you would sell more vegetables if you displayed them this
way is the way you had it, And some thought, well,
what does this guy know? Not everybody appreciating his advice,
but it shows that he was already thinking about you know,
we're trying ways to do things a bit better than
a before there wasn't a man in Memphis who built
(03:41):
a chain of stores.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Mister Bauer's stores. They were small corner of grocery stores.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
But every Bowers store looked exactly the same as the
signs on the front and the layout of the store
where the grocers were placed.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
So each Bower store was identical. And that was an
innovation too.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
If you went from one store to the other, you
know exactly where to find what you wanted to buy
because everything was in the same place, despite you know,
in different locations. And Saunders, uh, he absorbed these ideas.
That's the principal chain store. Everything is alike as much
as it convenie. So if you're comfortable with what they do,
(04:25):
then you'll shop at chain store, no matter where that
location was. So you could go into a town where
you unfamiliar to you and find your favorite grocery, you know,
whatever the business is, or Starbucks that matter, they get
exactly what you want. And that's the whole principal Chase
or Bowers did that before. Saunders so clearly learned from
(04:48):
Bowers how to manage a change store business.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
The one thing that Bowers did not do was.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
Arranged things customs to take out themselves, so you still
had clerks. And Saunders thought this was inefficient way of
doing things, and he was kind of sarcastic. He says,
you know, and a store is not very busy, the
poor customer can't get the attention to a clerk because
(05:20):
they're busy, goofed off of the back crew. He said
that that happens, or they're so busy, like during Christmas season,
you know, everyone's shopping in the store, so busy they
can't handle the orders properly. The arrangement of the store
the Bowers and the older merchants had was as he
walked up to a counter, and once you had your
(05:42):
clerk's attention, you would rattle off what you wanted and
then he would go about the the rest of the
store picking out the items you wanted and bring them
to the frog and then you would transact business. Then
then off you go. And Saunders thought, well, you know,
they don't need a clerk to tell them that Campbell's
(06:02):
soup is good, or you just put it on a
shelf that can find it themselves.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
He took this.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
Journey to Terre Haute, Indiana to look at a store
that he was told was unique and designs differently, and
he came back a bit disappointed.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
It wasn't really anything special at all.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
And Saunders told the story off and he said, on
the way back, he saw this mother pig at a farm,
and he saw all these piglets trying to feed off
the mother pig. And it invited in with customers trying
to attract inching of a clerk. And then the idea
that popped in his head. He had the name Pigley
(06:46):
Wingley just from seeing this pig.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Okay, that's the name.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
And then he went about designing, well, how would we
get to actually do this. We'd have to practically rebuild
the interior of a store to change itself.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Served Tigley Wiggley, you know, that was his name, and uh,
it was a very unusual name.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
I mean, I think it was perfect for what he
was trying to do because he's being different.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
And then he would he.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
Began writing advertisements where Pigley Wiggily became a character.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Tickley Wiggley goes to town. You know, Tigley Wiggley does this.
Speaker 4 (07:21):
Uh, and so you know that's how he built his
h forehand identity. He made a story out of imaginary
pig that went shopping. I read part of one is
Tigley Wiggily. Ain't that a funny name? A fellow that
got up that name must have a screw loose somewhere.
(07:42):
All this may be so, but Pigley Wiggily knows its
own business best, and his business will be this to
have no store coourse gab and smirked while folks are
standing around ten deep weighted dog.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Every customer will be her own cart.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
So if she wants to talk to a kid of
tomatoes and kill her time, all right, and well, the
scenes likely this would be a mighty loadsome chat. Saunders
addressed customer fears. You know, it used to be if
you went into certain stores in the old days, and
(08:20):
you know, the clerk might put his thumb on the scale,
so you'd pay extra for tomatoes or potatoes or whatever,
or they'd sell you food that was out of date.
And Saunders thought all that was just just raw. It
was just not good business, and you could sell more
groceries just by being honest.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
He was very proud of.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
He talked a lot about labeling prices on everything. So
if you walk in, you go to the can soup aisle,
you know exactly what the price of that soup is.
And it didn't matter what store you're in one of
his stores, they all things about the same and it
didn't matter who you were or whether the clerk knew
(09:04):
you or not, he got the same price.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
When we come back, more of Mike Freeman telling the
story of Clarence Saunders, the founder of Pigley Wiggly. Here
on our American stories, and we continue with our American
(09:41):
stories and with author Mike Freeman telling the story of
Pigley Wiggly and its founder Clarence Saunders. Let's continue with Mike.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
He knew he was taking a less profit. He probably
had people in the grocery business said it wouldn't can't make
any money. You're not selling hid of you're not making
enough profit. But he he was looking up a volume. Yeah,
and you can open. The more stores you open, the
more volume you have. You know, one of the benefits
of self service is you were you are selling more
goods per day and that helps eliminate the problem of
(10:19):
spoiled food or expired for And Saunders was aware of that,
and he would advertise to people say this is what
I'm doing.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
I'm gonna treat you fair.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
I mean, now, you can't imagine going in the store
not having a label on it, so this is thirty
two cents or whatever.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Can't imagine it.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
But before, you know, in the twentieth century, that was commonplate.
And when once you label everything, then no grocery store
can hide. His competitors were thinking, oh, oh, you know,
we'd have to do something different. You know, he proved
right there with that first year that he had about
eight or nine stores in Memphis and Bowers at over
(10:59):
forty and he outsold Boer stores simply because he made
it easier for people to shop, and they just start
swarming into this to piggy Wiggless. You know, he's one
of those rare individuals that has an idea that work
and that transformed part of our society.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
I don't say he's as great as Henry Ford, but
you know Ford.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
Decided, well, why can't we put an engine in this
little carriage and then hook it up to some wheels
and then we don't need a horse and bug anting well.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
We have a car changed the world.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
The solidarys isn't of that level of success, but I
think he had the same mind where he thought, well,
let's do something a little different here. You know the
old ways are, Yeah, we can do a little faster,
a little bit better than that. And then that's what
pigleg was grocery stores version of the model T.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
That's interesting is that next year he started franchise and
he actually filed for several patents, several pats but he
started selling the idea that well, uh, you guys down
in Arkansas and this is in me, you can build
a thing. It would you know, there's towns all over
the South that were large enough to sport a couple
(12:19):
of grocery store.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
And then that proceeded very rapidly, showing franchises all over
the place. You could argue that the founder of Walmart
did virtually the same thing. He put a Walmart and
medium sized towns. You know, the town doesn't have a Walmart,
it is kind of not a town. But having a
(12:40):
store like that in your community, hiring the local folks
to work in the store, probably manage the store. It
built a loyalty for that brand for Walmart still exists.
It differents to a Walden and Saunders, as Walder never
lost his visits. He held on to him where I
think Saunders had a lot of this same attitudes, same personality.
(13:02):
In some way he wanted to be that champion, but
in the end he didn't keep that business long enough.
Right now, most people don't know Saunder's in Saunders achieved
a level of celebrity and wealth that must people only
dream of. He's most famous for. The Pig Palace is
a building. I don't know how many square feeted well,
(13:27):
they've added on to it, but a majority of that
thirty six hous of square feet is what he built.
It was to have a swimming pool and have everything
a rich person would walk. Saunders tried to outsmart traders
of Wall Street, and to explain it simply, he didn't
(13:47):
realize they wrote the rules of trade. There was no
governing agency overseeing financial trade that we have now. It
was whatever certain people, what we call Wall Street, decided
to do is what was done. They made the rules
among themselves. I have trouble sometimes describing a short cell
(14:10):
as just a stock maneuver where different people in the
financial business spread rumors at the companies in trouble that
stocks of what not worth what it's listing at now,
and Saunders thought that was horrible. I think we Wiggy
had overexpanded and there was a franchiser or two that
(14:31):
had gone back run and that was all the trigger
that these short sellers needed. And he started this campaign,
is take the shares out of the hands of these Wall.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Street thieves or wolves.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
And he started a buying campaign in Memphis, you know,
save Piggy Wiggily from Memphis. Most people in Memphis, or
you know, any city outside of New York probably thought
about Wall Street the same speed. And it was sort
of a this kind of a villainous place, and he
was playing on that, you know, don't let these thieves
take our fingerly Wiggley away frogles. So everyone invested in
(15:06):
saunders scheme to buy all the shares hold them well,
he pushed these these traders into a paddock because whatever they.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Borrow, they have to pay. And if he's.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
Buying all the shares, they have to come to him.
We repay what they owe him. I mean, he was
trying to trap them. And the Border directors of the
Stock Exchange in New York kept Saunders from doing that.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
They let the traders off the hook. They could change
the rules.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
See there's no government agency overseeing stock trick.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Whatever.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
The Border directors thought was legal was illegal, and especially
if they had friends.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Who got caught up in the scheme. We're begging, you know,
don't let us die out of here. That's well, well,
less Saunders died.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
You know, they don't know him, they don't care about him.
He's out part of their social vidu or anything like
that at all. He's just some deal ability from Tennessee
who thought he knew what he was doing. They just
you know, interpreted rules to let him die. So he
had borrowed all that money. Instead of gaining what he
(16:17):
thought would be hundreds of millions of dollars, he had nothing,
you know, twelve. They has a lot of money today.
To lude imagine what it was like in nineteen twenty three.
What Saunders had done, and there were people that really
liked him because he was, you know, come very famous,
was that he had begged Memphians to pull together money
(16:39):
pay off this debt. Some things can get back to
normal operating under his leadership.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
And and people did. They had rallies or save Pigmy
Wingley from Memphis. That was a campaign not for Saunders.
He was careful to say save Pingley Wingley from Memphis.
And he had a point there too.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
I mean, and you know there's a lot of jobs
in medicine staut because of the store, this business. And
then he made the dumb mistake of putting money into
this what we now know is a pig palace, which
was an extravagant hole.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
I says. You know, they and people that invested in piguway,
they must have been shocked. Is what aren't the watering doing.
Speaker 4 (17:23):
We're taking time away from our business, spending our money,
bail you out, and you're building this stupid house.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
You don't have time for that anymore. How did they
find out about it?
Speaker 4 (17:35):
Well, a workman had been injured and the newspaper published story. Yeah,
holy cow, you know they couldn't believe it. This is
terrible mistake. He may then costing well, I mean he
tried to get to make money and he did, but
I mean he's still famous for what to be wigglet
(17:57):
and he lost the oh here in the company six years.
I guess the story is Markle in itself was that
who started with one store. Six years later he had
a thousand I mean gonna have some substantial chain.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
But I mean he was successful.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
He did build something that was and he he just
didn't hold on to it. I mean he would be
Sam Walton today, or his memory would be as big
as Sam Walton if he had just held out into
Pigmy Wiggley.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Like Walton held on to Walmart.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
The most fitting memorial to him is the ordinary self
service store. Sam Walton founded Walmart in nineteen sixty two.
By the end of his life in nineteen ninety two,
Walton owned the largest retail merchandising company in the world.
In his autobiography Sam Walton Made in America, he credited
(18:57):
the enormous success of his retail stores to the principle
of self service. His brief description of the benefice that
self service gave to him and his desire to pass
on the savings to his customers seemed to be a
near match to Saunder's own words two generations before. During
the past twenty five years, supermarkets and large merchandise stores
(19:21):
have become popular in nearly every country in Europe, Asia,
Latin America, and parts of Africa. In an odd way,
Clarence Saunder's prophetic slovant for Pigley Wiggly all over the
world that's come true.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
And great job on the piece as always by Greg Hengler,
and a special thanks to Mike Freeman who wrote The
Booth Clarence Saunders and the Founding of Pigly Wiggly and
what a story, and that he started the idea of
pricing and transparency and volume so that we could lower
profits on each individual item but make up for that
(19:56):
with volume, and that is indeed what Sam Walton did.
There's no doubt that Sam took a lot of the
ideas of Pickley Wiggily and scaled them to a much
larger operation. The story of Pigley Wiggily, the story of
Clarence Saunders. Here on our American Story
And we continue here with our American stories scrabbing a basket.
While grocery shopping may seem second nature today, but the
idea was once groundbreaking, and that was far from the
only thing that changed when Pigley Wiggley, the first modern
American supermarket, opened over one hundred years ago. On September six,
(00:30):
nineteen sixteen, hundreds of curious shoppers came out for the
opening of a new grocery store at seventy nine Jefferson
Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee, and we broadcast here in Oxford, Mississippi.
Memphis is only one hour practically due north. For weeks
they'd seen billboards and read newspaper ads about this grocery
store with the funny name that promised an entirely new
(00:53):
shopping experience, one that would, according to its owner, forever
change the retail grocery business. Greg Hangler sat down with
Mike Freeman. You're the location of that first Piggley Wiggily
in downtown Memphis. Mike Freeman is the author of Clarence
Saunders and the Founding of Piggy Wiggily, The Rise and
Fall of a Memphis maverick.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
I took a job at a restaurant downtown Memphis that
happened to be at seventy nine Jefferson and that was
the first location of the Pigmywiggley store.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
It was an interesting fact though I became interested in that.
My employer wanted me to do some research because he
was curious as well. You know what happened in the building.
It's such.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
It's important to know what Saunders did differently was in
the old days, if you went into a store to shop,
you couldn't just reach out and pick out your own grocery.
You had the clerks do that for you. So you
had to wait for them to you tell the clark
what you wanted, then they would bring it to you.
And Saunders thought, well, this is really slow, this is
(01:57):
so inefficient. And all this tied in with Rand advertised.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Before the tournament Satuy.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
He had all these brands we still recognized, Kellogg Cereal,
Van Camp, Pork and Beans. All these companies were selling
their products and stores and Saunders knew, well, you don't
need a clerk to tell you what cereal you like?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
You like Kellogg Cereal, there it is, you get it yourself.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
Most important thing to him is I could sell more groceries,
less costs, I pay fewer people.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Saunders grew up from a family that was poor.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
In fact, there's one story that a neighbor bought Clarens
a pair of shoes, and then when Saunders had money
later in life, he who sent a check to that
family for a number of years because they helped him
out and then he really needed it. So he knew
what it was like to suffer you're to living hardship,
(02:57):
and he carried that with him, you know, he that
probably motivated him as much as he sings to do something.
Saunders became a traveling salesman for wholesale company, so he
would call upon grocers and Saunders developed a reputation from
being a bit brash. He would go into a store
(03:18):
and he would tell the store owner says, you know,
you would sell more vegetables if you displayed them this
way is the way you had it, And some thought, well,
what does this guy know? Not everybody appreciating his advice,
but it shows that he was already thinking about you know,
we're trying ways to do things a bit better than
a before there wasn't a man in Memphis who built
(03:41):
a chain of stores.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Mister Bauer's stores. They were small corner of grocery stores.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
But every Bowers store looked exactly the same as the
signs on the front and the layout of the store
where the grocers were placed.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
So each Bower store was identical. And that was an
innovation too.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
If you went from one store to the other, you
know exactly where to find what you wanted to buy
because everything was in the same place, despite you know,
in different locations. And Saunders, uh, he absorbed these ideas.
That's the principal chain store. Everything is alike as much
as it convenie. So if you're comfortable with what they do,
(04:25):
then you'll shop at chain store, no matter where that
location was. So you could go into a town where
you unfamiliar to you and find your favorite grocery, you know,
whatever the business is, or Starbucks that matter, they get
exactly what you want. And that's the whole principal Chase
or Bowers did that before. Saunders so clearly learned from
(04:48):
Bowers how to manage a change store business.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
The one thing that Bowers did not do was.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
Arranged things customs to take out themselves, so you still
had clerks. And Saunders thought this was inefficient way of
doing things, and he was kind of sarcastic. He says,
you know, and a store is not very busy, the
poor customer can't get the attention to a clerk because
(05:20):
they're busy, goofed off of the back crew. He said
that that happens, or they're so busy, like during Christmas season,
you know, everyone's shopping in the store, so busy they
can't handle the orders properly. The arrangement of the store
the Bowers and the older merchants had was as he
walked up to a counter, and once you had your
(05:42):
clerk's attention, you would rattle off what you wanted and
then he would go about the the rest of the
store picking out the items you wanted and bring them
to the frog and then you would transact business. Then
then off you go. And Saunders thought, well, you know,
they don't need a clerk to tell them that Campbell's
(06:02):
soup is good, or you just put it on a
shelf that can find it themselves.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
He took this.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
Journey to Terre Haute, Indiana to look at a store
that he was told was unique and designs differently, and
he came back a bit disappointed.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
It wasn't really anything special at all.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
And Saunders told the story off and he said, on
the way back, he saw this mother pig at a farm,
and he saw all these piglets trying to feed off
the mother pig. And it invited in with customers trying
to attract inching of a clerk. And then the idea
that popped in his head. He had the name Pigley
(06:46):
Wingley just from seeing this pig.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Okay, that's the name.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
And then he went about designing, well, how would we
get to actually do this. We'd have to practically rebuild
the interior of a store to change itself.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Served Tigley Wiggley, you know, that was his name, and uh,
it was a very unusual name.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
I mean, I think it was perfect for what he
was trying to do because he's being different.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
And then he would he.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
Began writing advertisements where Pigley Wiggily became a character.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Tickley Wiggley goes to town. You know, Tigley Wiggley does this.
Speaker 4 (07:21):
Uh, and so you know that's how he built his
h forehand identity. He made a story out of imaginary
pig that went shopping. I read part of one is
Tigley Wiggily. Ain't that a funny name? A fellow that
got up that name must have a screw loose somewhere.
(07:42):
All this may be so, but Pigley Wiggily knows its
own business best, and his business will be this to
have no store coourse gab and smirked while folks are
standing around ten deep weighted dog.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Every customer will be her own cart.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
So if she wants to talk to a kid of
tomatoes and kill her time, all right, and well, the
scenes likely this would be a mighty loadsome chat. Saunders
addressed customer fears. You know, it used to be if
you went into certain stores in the old days, and
(08:20):
you know, the clerk might put his thumb on the scale,
so you'd pay extra for tomatoes or potatoes or whatever,
or they'd sell you food that was out of date.
And Saunders thought all that was just just raw. It
was just not good business, and you could sell more
groceries just by being honest.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
He was very proud of.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
He talked a lot about labeling prices on everything. So
if you walk in, you go to the can soup aisle,
you know exactly what the price of that soup is.
And it didn't matter what store you're in one of
his stores, they all things about the same and it
didn't matter who you were or whether the clerk knew
(09:04):
you or not, he got the same price.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
When we come back, more of Mike Freeman telling the
story of Clarence Saunders, the founder of Pigley Wiggly. Here
on our American stories, and we continue with our American
(09:41):
stories and with author Mike Freeman telling the story of
Pigley Wiggly and its founder Clarence Saunders. Let's continue with Mike.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
He knew he was taking a less profit. He probably
had people in the grocery business said it wouldn't can't make
any money. You're not selling hid of you're not making
enough profit. But he he was looking up a volume. Yeah,
and you can open. The more stores you open, the
more volume you have. You know, one of the benefits
of self service is you were you are selling more
goods per day and that helps eliminate the problem of
(10:19):
spoiled food or expired for And Saunders was aware of that,
and he would advertise to people say this is what
I'm doing.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
I'm gonna treat you fair.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
I mean, now, you can't imagine going in the store
not having a label on it, so this is thirty
two cents or whatever.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Can't imagine it.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
But before, you know, in the twentieth century, that was commonplate.
And when once you label everything, then no grocery store
can hide. His competitors were thinking, oh, oh, you know,
we'd have to do something different. You know, he proved
right there with that first year that he had about
eight or nine stores in Memphis and Bowers at over
(10:59):
forty and he outsold Boer stores simply because he made
it easier for people to shop, and they just start
swarming into this to piggy Wiggless. You know, he's one
of those rare individuals that has an idea that work
and that transformed part of our society.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
I don't say he's as great as Henry Ford, but
you know Ford.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
Decided, well, why can't we put an engine in this
little carriage and then hook it up to some wheels
and then we don't need a horse and bug anting well.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
We have a car changed the world.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
The solidarys isn't of that level of success, but I
think he had the same mind where he thought, well,
let's do something a little different here. You know the
old ways are, Yeah, we can do a little faster,
a little bit better than that. And then that's what
pigleg was grocery stores version of the model T.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
That's interesting is that next year he started franchise and
he actually filed for several patents, several pats but he
started selling the idea that well, uh, you guys down
in Arkansas and this is in me, you can build
a thing. It would you know, there's towns all over
the South that were large enough to sport a couple
(12:19):
of grocery store.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
And then that proceeded very rapidly, showing franchises all over
the place. You could argue that the founder of Walmart
did virtually the same thing. He put a Walmart and
medium sized towns. You know, the town doesn't have a Walmart,
it is kind of not a town. But having a
(12:40):
store like that in your community, hiring the local folks
to work in the store, probably manage the store. It
built a loyalty for that brand for Walmart still exists.
It differents to a Walden and Saunders, as Walder never
lost his visits. He held on to him where I
think Saunders had a lot of this same attitudes, same personality.
(13:02):
In some way he wanted to be that champion, but
in the end he didn't keep that business long enough.
Right now, most people don't know Saunder's in Saunders achieved
a level of celebrity and wealth that must people only
dream of. He's most famous for. The Pig Palace is
a building. I don't know how many square feeted well,
(13:27):
they've added on to it, but a majority of that
thirty six hous of square feet is what he built.
It was to have a swimming pool and have everything
a rich person would walk. Saunders tried to outsmart traders
of Wall Street, and to explain it simply, he didn't
(13:47):
realize they wrote the rules of trade. There was no
governing agency overseeing financial trade that we have now. It
was whatever certain people, what we call Wall Street, decided
to do is what was done. They made the rules
among themselves. I have trouble sometimes describing a short cell
(14:10):
as just a stock maneuver where different people in the
financial business spread rumors at the companies in trouble that
stocks of what not worth what it's listing at now,
and Saunders thought that was horrible. I think we Wiggy
had overexpanded and there was a franchiser or two that
(14:31):
had gone back run and that was all the trigger
that these short sellers needed. And he started this campaign,
is take the shares out of the hands of these Wall.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Street thieves or wolves.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
And he started a buying campaign in Memphis, you know,
save Piggy Wiggily from Memphis. Most people in Memphis, or
you know, any city outside of New York probably thought
about Wall Street the same speed. And it was sort
of a this kind of a villainous place, and he
was playing on that, you know, don't let these thieves
take our fingerly Wiggley away frogles. So everyone invested in
(15:06):
saunders scheme to buy all the shares hold them well,
he pushed these these traders into a paddock because whatever they.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Borrow, they have to pay. And if he's.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
Buying all the shares, they have to come to him.
We repay what they owe him. I mean, he was
trying to trap them. And the Border directors of the
Stock Exchange in New York kept Saunders from doing that.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
They let the traders off the hook. They could change
the rules.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
See there's no government agency overseeing stock trick.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Whatever.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
The Border directors thought was legal was illegal, and especially
if they had friends.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Who got caught up in the scheme. We're begging, you know,
don't let us die out of here. That's well, well,
less Saunders died.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
You know, they don't know him, they don't care about him.
He's out part of their social vidu or anything like
that at all. He's just some deal ability from Tennessee
who thought he knew what he was doing. They just
you know, interpreted rules to let him die. So he
had borrowed all that money. Instead of gaining what he
(16:17):
thought would be hundreds of millions of dollars, he had nothing,
you know, twelve. They has a lot of money today.
To lude imagine what it was like in nineteen twenty three.
What Saunders had done, and there were people that really
liked him because he was, you know, come very famous,
was that he had begged Memphians to pull together money
(16:39):
pay off this debt. Some things can get back to
normal operating under his leadership.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
And and people did. They had rallies or save Pigmy
Wingley from Memphis. That was a campaign not for Saunders.
He was careful to say save Pingley Wingley from Memphis.
And he had a point there too.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
I mean, and you know there's a lot of jobs
in medicine staut because of the store, this business. And
then he made the dumb mistake of putting money into
this what we now know is a pig palace, which
was an extravagant hole.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
I says. You know, they and people that invested in piguway,
they must have been shocked. Is what aren't the watering doing.
Speaker 4 (17:23):
We're taking time away from our business, spending our money,
bail you out, and you're building this stupid house.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
You don't have time for that anymore. How did they
find out about it?
Speaker 4 (17:35):
Well, a workman had been injured and the newspaper published story. Yeah,
holy cow, you know they couldn't believe it. This is
terrible mistake. He may then costing well, I mean he
tried to get to make money and he did, but
I mean he's still famous for what to be wigglet
(17:57):
and he lost the oh here in the company six years.
I guess the story is Markle in itself was that
who started with one store. Six years later he had
a thousand I mean gonna have some substantial chain.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
But I mean he was successful.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
He did build something that was and he he just
didn't hold on to it. I mean he would be
Sam Walton today, or his memory would be as big
as Sam Walton if he had just held out into
Pigmy Wiggley.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Like Walton held on to Walmart.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
The most fitting memorial to him is the ordinary self
service store. Sam Walton founded Walmart in nineteen sixty two.
By the end of his life in nineteen ninety two,
Walton owned the largest retail merchandising company in the world.
In his autobiography Sam Walton Made in America, he credited
(18:57):
the enormous success of his retail stores to the principle
of self service. His brief description of the benefice that
self service gave to him and his desire to pass
on the savings to his customers seemed to be a
near match to Saunder's own words two generations before. During
the past twenty five years, supermarkets and large merchandise stores
(19:21):
have become popular in nearly every country in Europe, Asia,
Latin America, and parts of Africa. In an odd way,
Clarence Saunder's prophetic slovant for Pigley Wiggly all over the
world that's come true.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
And great job on the piece as always by Greg Hengler,
and a special thanks to Mike Freeman who wrote The
Booth Clarence Saunders and the Founding of Pigly Wiggly and
what a story, and that he started the idea of
pricing and transparency and volume so that we could lower
profits on each individual item but make up for that
(19:56):
with volume, and that is indeed what Sam Walton did.
There's no doubt that Sam took a lot of the
ideas of Pickley Wiggily and scaled them to a much
larger operation. The story of Pigley Wiggily, the story of
Clarence Saunders. Here on our American Story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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