Piggly Wiggly First Self-Service Grocery
Piggly Wiggly's first self-service grocery store, generally considered the first of its kind, opened in September 1916 at 79 Jefferson in Memphis, Tennessee, where founder Clarence Saunders let shoppers take goods from the shelves themselves.
What happened and why it matters
Piggly Wiggly moved picking from the store clerk to the customer, and the layout ideas it introduced, from open shelves to a set path past every product, still shape store and warehouse design. Before Saunders, clerks gathered items from behind a counter. His store sent shoppers along a one-way route through the aisles to collect packaged goods and pay at a checkout, and he received a patent for his self-serving store in 1917. Online grocery partly reverses the shift: store staff and micro-fulfillment centers again pick orders for customers, using pick paths and slotting much like Saunders' aisles.
People
Related events
Sources
- Our History pigglywiggly.com
- Piggly Wiggly en.wikipedia.org
- Clarence Saunders en.wikipedia.org