How Piggly Wiggly Invented the American Supermarket

On this episode of Our American Stories, when Clarence Saunders opened Piggly Wiggly in 1916, shoppers in Memphis, Tennessee, didn’t know what to make of it. Until then, groceries were ordered at a counter while a clerk gathered every item. Saunders told customers to do something new: take a basket, walk the aisles, and choose for themselves. It was the first self-service grocery store, and it changed everything about the way Americans shop. Mike Freeman, author of Clarence Saunders & the Founding of Piggly Wiggly: The Rise and Fall of a Memphis Maverick, shares the story of how one man’s bold experiment became the blueprint for the modern supermarket.

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