How Piggly Wiggly Pioneered The Modern Grocery Store

The grocery store as we know it today did not exist at the beginning of the 20th century. That's when Clarence Saunders pioneered the first self-service grocery store. This was a big change from the clerk service that dominated the retail business. Before Piggly Wiggly opened in 1916, the only way to shop was to stand at a counter and tell a clerk what you wanted. The clerk selected, weighed, and gathered your items before packaging and ringing them up on the cash register. It was a time-consuming process that Saunders wanted to get improve on.

Saunders introduced Piggly Wiggly, a grocery store where there were no clerks. Customers entered, were given a wooden basket, and instructed to gather their groceries themselves. Store employees were present, but only to stock shelves. They were instructed to politely decline any customer's request to gather items. At the end of the trip, the customers met a clerk-like employee at a cash register who rang up their items. This entire experience was novel but quickly spread. By 1922, just six years after opening, there were 1,000 Piggly Wiggly stores across 17 states.

Saunders would later lose his ownership of Piggly Wiggly after taking his business public, but that wouldn't stop him from making one more innovation that still survives today's retail landscape. After the businessman lost his stake in the Piggly Wiggly chain in 1923, he moved on to another store. He named the new "Clarence Saunders: Sole Owner of My Own Name" store. The name was later shortened to "Sole Owner." Saunders continued the model he developed for Piggly Wiggly in the Sole Owner stores, adding something new: clerk-style counters for the bakery and butcher sections. Saunders brought the bakery and the butcher into his Sole Owner stores, the business model that defines the modern grocery store.

Interestingly, Saunders never disclosed the origin of the name Piggly Wiggly. There were rumors of a train trip and a herd of pigs in a field. Saunders himself joked in an interview that he wanted a name that would be talked about and remembered. He did have a penchant for odd names. In 1937, after the Sole Owner chain succumbed to the Great Depression, Saunders tried to open a chain of grocery stores that featured vending machines. He named that store Keedoozle. Despite the naming choices, all of Saunders' grocery store ideas were innovative at the time, influencing how people shop for groceries to this day.