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• WIGGLY PIGGLY SERIES

The concept of the "self-serving store" was patented by Saunders in 1917. Piggly Wiggly Corporation secured the self-service format and issued franchises to hundreds of grocery retailers to operate its stores.

Others were initially experimenting with this format, which came to be known as a "groceteria", reminding people of cafeterias, another relatively new, self-service idea. Losses due to easier shoplifting were more than offset by profits from increased impulse purchasing. Piggly Wiggly introduced the innovation of allowing customers to go through the store, gathering their goods, thus cutting costs and lowering prices. This created greater costs and higher prices. Instead, a customer would give a list of items to a clerk, who would then collect them throughout the store. A replica of the original store has been constructed in the Memphis Pink Palace Museum and Planetarium, a mansion that Saunders built as his private residence, which was later sold to the city.Īt the time of its founding, grocery stores did not allow customers to gather their goods. It was founded on Septem (although it did not open until five days later due to delays in construction), at 79 Jefferson Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee, by Clarence Saunders. Piggly Wiggly was the first self-service grocery store.

Must have been the names.History Historical marker near the site of the first Piggly Wiggly store in Memphis, Tennessee He later tried to introduce concepts like Keedoozle and Foodelectric, fully automated grocery stores, didn’t take off. But he wasn’t done redesigning the grocery business. As a result, he lost control of it early in the 1920s. According to Piggly Wiggly, not long after he franchised the Piggly Wiggly idea Saunders started issuing public stock in the company. Though his model quickly took off, he wasn’t at the helm for very long.

WIGGLY PIGGLY SERIES

The year after the first store opened, Saunders secured his concept with a series of patents belonging to his Piggly Wiggly Corporation. “One story says that, while riding a train, he looked out his window and saw several little pigs struggling to get under a fence, which prompted him to think of the rhyme.” Another option is branding, Piggly Wiggly writes: “Someone once asked him why he had chosen such an unusual name for his organization, to which he replied, ‘So people will ask that very question.’” “He was curiously reluctant to explain its origin,” Piggly Wiggly’s corporate history reports. “One day Memphis shall be proud of Piggly Wiggly… And it shall be said by all men… That the Piggly Wigglies shall multiply and replenish the earth with more and cleaner things to eat,” Saunders said a few months after the store’s opening, according to Freeman.Īs for the name, nobody knows. By the end of that first year there were nine Piggly Wiggly locations around Memphis. Shoppers on that first day did see some employees stocking shelves, Freeman writes, “but they politely refused to select merchandise for visitors.” Just like today, a shopper picked up a basket (though Piggly Wiggly’s were made of wood, not plastic) and went through the store to purchase everything. Saunders’s model cut costs by cutting out the clerks. Even chain stores used clerks.Īlthough the chain store model helped keep costs down, the University of Michigan Library writes, the “small army of clerks” necessary to fill orders were expensive, the university writes, and at least part of that cost was passed on to the consumer. Before Piggly Wiggly, groceries were sold at stores where a clerk would assemble your order for you, weighing out dry goods from large barrels. This enthusiastic greeting was necessary because Saunders was trying something completely new. A brass band serenaded the visitors in the lobby.” “Newspaper reporters posing as contest judges awarded five and ten dollar gold coins to every woman, while the supply lasted. “At the door Saunders shook their hands and gave to their children flowers and balloons,” Freeman writes. For the store’s opening ceremonies, writes Mike Freeman for the Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Saunders promised to hold a “beauty contest” that he advertised in local newspapers. But its founder Clarence Saunders was clearly onto something-today, self-service grocery stores are the norm. Its founding is one of the stranger stories in the history of retail. Today, the chain has more than 530 stores across 17 states, according to its website. On this day in 1916, the first Piggly Wiggly opened in Memphis, Tennessee. The one question is why their innovator named the first one Piggly Wiggly. Self-serve grocery stores saved shoppers money and made financial sense.