Piggly Wiggly food stores began as a ‘Southern thing’

Piggly Wiggly was born in the South and pioneered “self-serve supermarket shopping” in America. 

Clarence Saunders was 35 when he launched Piggly Wiggly in 1916 in Memphis, Tenn., to “revolutionize” the grocery buying process.

 

Here’s how grocery shopping used to work: A customer would enter a market and present a shopping list to a clerk stationed behind a counter. The clerk would skitter about the inventory of foods, gather the requested items and then determine the sum of the order. Prices often “varied,” causing the customer to suffer great angst. 

If the number of customers exceeded the number of clerks, the scene could get quite hectic. One journalist described the action of customers trying to get a clerk’s attention a lot like watching wiggly piglets trying to grab a meal. 

In Saunders’ mind, there had to be a better system.

 

Food writer Donna Boss said Saunders believed he could increase efficiency, reduce costs and attract customers. After passing through a turnstile, each customer was handed a store basket by a Piggly Wiggly greeter. 

The store featured a one-way “continuous aisle” layout that snaked back and forth throughout the store, requiring all shoppers to walk in an orderly fashion past every “priced-stamped item” in the store – and serve themselves.

 

Customers selected their items off the shelves, placing them into their basket. Shoppers were amazed at the variety – a cafeteria of choices. Someone coined the term “groceteria.”

Louella Weaver, a Memphis museum curator, joked that “impulse buying was born in 1916 at Piggly Wiggly.” 

Also, customers were required to pay “cash money” for their items, rather than running a line of credit. By eliminating the problem of collecting past-due accounts, Saunders became the “king of cash-and-carry.” 

Piggly Wiggly advertisements boasted: “Your dollar at Piggly Wiggly will not help pay the BAD DEBTS of others.” 

Freelance writer Andrew Lisa said: “Saunders set his prices with a margin just 14% above cost. That, coupled with buying in bulk, allowed him to keep prices low.” 

“All of this innovation quickly made the shops of old feel like relics. By the end of that first year, the city was bursting with no fewer than nine Piggly Wigglys,” Lisa wrote.

 

Clarence Saunders’ star continued to rise through 1922, but he lost control over Piggly Wiggly in 1923 after a complicated series of events involving ownership of the company’s stock, reported Memphis historian Bill Carey. 

“Saunders borrowed millions of dollars in an attempt to buy control of his own stock. But on Wall Street, his plot backfired, and Saunders went from filthy rich to destitute overnight,” Carey said. 

Piggly Wiggly stores remained open, and Memphis businessman James Cowden Bradford Sr. was brought in to right the ship in 1924. (He was the founder in 1927 of the brokerage firm named J.C. Bradford & Co.) 

The value of Piggly Wiggly franchises continued to grow over time, as the company locked in on a clever marketing plan in 1997 to leverage the chain’s rural, small-town identity. Slogans included “down home, down the street” and “local since forever.”

 

“There is a place in people’s lives for a traditional supermarket, one that is friendly and convenient like Piggly Wiggly,” company president Larry Wright said at the time. 

“Politeness and courtesy continue to define the Piggly Wiggly way of doing business,” commented Ralph Schwartz of mashed.com, a social media site focused on foods. 

Today, a smiling young female shopper featured on the company’s website says: “I dig Mr. Pig.”