On September 6, 1916, Clarence Saunders opened the first self-service grocery store called Piggly Wiggly in Memphis, Tennessee. Prior to this, grocery stores required customers to provide clerks with lists who would then collect and bag items. Saunders' innovative store design allowed customers to directly select products themselves from aisles and purchase lower priced items without a clerk's markup. The self-service model was hugely successful and helped Piggly Wiggly stores proliferate across the South and Midwest in following decades, revolutionizing the grocery shopping experience.

1. On September 6, 1916, hundreds flocked to the grand opening of a grocery store in Memphis, Tennessee.
Source: historic-memphis.com

2. For weeks they’d seen ads about the store with a funny name—one that would, according to founder
Clarence Saunders, revolutionize the way people bought groceries.
Source: historic-memphis.com

3. Until then, all grocers operated on the same model: customers were not allowed to select products by themselves.
Instead, they went to the counter, said what they needed, and waited while a clerk collected and bagged their goods.
Source: photo by: GHI/Universal History Archive via Getty Images

4. Those who wanted home delivery were charged inflated markups of 33% on each item for the “convenience.”
Source: photo by: Patrick Foster/Motorbooks

5. Moreover, since grocers neglected to list prices, clerks could (and often did) charge customers
different amounts for the same item.
Source: photo by: GHI/Universal History Archive via Getty Images
Look at me the
wrong way
and I’ll charge
ya double!

6. Source: Tennesseeencyclopedia.net
Saunders knew there must be a better way.

7. If that were the case, he mused, you’d have more customers selecting products at a given time and you wouldn’t have to pay
idle employees to essentially socialize during slow hours.
Shoppers don’t need to wait, he thought; if people want something, they should be able to get it themselves.

8. Source: historydaily.org
Thus, Saunders’ ‘Piggly Wiggly,’ on 79 Jefferson Avenue, became the first “Self Service” grocery store in America.

9. Source: historic-memphis.com
Saunders got rid of the counter clerks, putting more than 1,000 products (4x more than a typical grocery)
in four aisles for everyone to see, touch, weigh, and take.

10. Every customer is “free to choose,” he declared.
Source: historic-memphis.com

11. He put employees in one recognizable uniform.
He introduced turnstiles to streamline traffic.
He gave shoppers baskets to easily carry goods.
He printed out receipts to show honest business.

12. He put employees in the same uniform to reinforce the brand.
He introduced turnstiles to streamline traffic.
He gave shoppers baskets to easily carry goods.
He put price tags over each product, using tiny hooks so employees could change prices and customers could notice how
much cheaper they were than the competition.

13. Even the lighting, long fixtures that illuminated every aisle, was ahead of its time.
Source: historic-memphis.com

14. Within months, Piggly Wiggly sold $80,000 more than the average grocer did in the same period, while cutting costs by
more than two thirds.
Over the next two decades, Piggly Wiggly spread like wildfire across the South and the Midwest, reaching more than 2500
stores by the 1930s.

15. Saunders constantly tested and tweaked, walking the floor with customers and finding ways where helping them
resulted in wins for the retailer as well.
Hydraulic lift, Anderson Piggly Wiggly, Lynchburg
Photo by: Kipp Teague (CC BY-NC-ND)

16. Competitors eventually began copying Saunder’s self-service format and innovations, whittling Piggly Wiggly down to the
530 stores that exist today.
Source: supermarketnews.com

17. It’s been 104 years, but these lessons from a small store and founder that revolutionized grocery still ring true today…

18. Lesson 1: A memorable customer experience is proactive.
It necessitates a question we often forget to ask: “What if it were me?”
Source: shutterstock.com

19. Lesson 2: True innovation isn’t static.
It requires tinkering.
It involves failing.
It won’t change the game if others did it first.

20. Lesson 3: It looks very different, but “Self-Service grocery” has largely remained the same.
Technology remains the constant differentiator between stores that stand out and stores that scrape-by.
Source: theverge.com

21. Lesson 4: Delivery margins still don’t add up for grocers and customers alike.
Even a century later.

22. Created by:
Meir Fox
Head of Grocery
meir@bringg.com
347-560-5185
Additional sources:
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/85551/market-disrupted-how-piggly-wiggly-revolutionized-grocery-shopping
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/bizarre-story-piggly-wiggly-first-self-service-grocery-store-180964708/
https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/01/25/piggly-wiggly/