London, UK – Memphis, USA

Today marks the 109th anniversary of a quiet but profound commercial revolution that began on September 6, 1916, when Piggly Wiggly opened its doors in Memphis, Tennessee. Founded by the visionary Clarence Saunders, this was not merely a new grocery store; it was the world’s first truly self-service supermarket format, introducing a concept so radical that it fundamentally changed consumer behaviour and laid the entire groundwork for the modern retail industry.

Headline Points

 * Birth of Self-Service: The first Piggly Wiggly store, located at 79 Jefferson Street in Memphis, Tennessee, introduced the revolutionary concept of allowing customers to select their own merchandise from shelves.

 * The Clerkless Model: Before 1916, grocery shopping involved customers handing a list to a clerk who gathered, weighed, and tallied the items—a slow, high-labour process that was completely eliminated by the new self-service model.

 * Modern Supermarket Staples: Saunders’ innovation brought several concepts now taken for granted: checkout stands, individual item price marking, shopping baskets, and a guided flow through the store’s aisles.

 * High Volume, Low Margin: The reduction in labour costs allowed Piggly Wiggly to operate on a high-volume, low-profit margin, delivering lower prices to the consumer and forcing competitors to adopt the model.

 * A Mysterious Name: Founder Clarence Saunders famously never explained the store’s curious name, stating he chose it “so people will ask that very question,” ensuring the brand was talked about and remembered.

From Counter Service to Consumer Control

Prior to Piggly Wiggly, the typical grocery store was defined by a large counter separating the customer from the goods. Patrons would provide their shopping list to a clerk, who would then retrieve all the items, a time-consuming and expensive method. Saunders saw this system as outdated and inefficient.

His solution was a revolutionary, patented store design. Customers entering Piggly Wiggly were given a shopping basket and directed through a maze-like layout of aisles. For the very first time, all products—which were pre-packaged and clearly price-marked—were accessible directly to the shopper. This seemingly simple change had massive implications:

 * Lower Prices: By cutting out the dozens of clerks needed to fetch goods, overhead costs plummeted, which Piggly Wiggly passed on to the customer through lower retail prices.

 * Increased Sales: Giving customers direct access to items led to a surge in impulse purchasing as shoppers browsed and discovered products they hadn’t initially intended to buy.

 * Branding Emerges: Since goods now had to speak for themselves on the shelf, the importance of packaging and national brand recognition soared.

Upon exiting the guided path, customers would bring their selections to a checkout stand—another Saunders invention—to pay a cashier and receive a printed receipt. This systematic process was protected by a U.S. Patent granted to Saunders in 1917 for his ‘Self Serving Store.’

The Enduring Legacy

Despite initial predictions of failure, the public quickly embraced the convenience and lower prices offered by the new method. Within a few years, Piggly Wiggly grew into a massive chain, operating over 1,200 stores nationwide by the early 1920s and forcing the entire industry to adapt.

The anniversary serves as a tribute to Saunders’ profound and lasting impact. His template—the layout, the pricing, the checkouts, the freedom of selection—is the blueprint for every supermarket, big box store, and warehouse club in the world today. While the founder eventually lost control of the company in the 1920s, the self-service model itself proved invincible, forever embedding the customer’s choice and convenience at the heart of the retail experience. The next time a shopper effortlessly navigates the aisles of a modern store, they are walking in the footsteps of a century-old innovation born in a modest Memphis storefront.