Piggly Wiggly

About

Piggly Wiggly®, America’s first true self-service grocery store, was founded in Memphis, Tennessee in 1916 by Clarence Saunders. In grocery stores of that time, shoppers presented their orders to clerks who then gathered the goods from the store shelves. Saunders, a dynamic and innovative man, noticed that this method resulted in wasted time and expense, so he came up with an unheard-of solution that would revolutionize the entire grocery industry: he developed a way for shoppers to serve themselves.

Despite predictions that his novel idea would fail, Saunders’ first store opened on September 6, 1916 at 79 Jefferson Street in Memphis. Operating under the unusual name ‘Piggly Wiggly®’, it was unlike any other contemporary grocery store. There were shopping baskets, open shelves, and no clerks to shop for the customer – all of which were previously unheard of!

Piggly Wiggly® Corporation, which Saunders established when he opened his first store in Memphis, secured the self-service format and issued franchises to hundreds of grocery retailers to operate their own Piggly Wiggly® stores.

Piggly Wiggly® Corporation became the owner of all Piggly Wiggly® properties – the name, the patents, etc., and Saunders began issuing company stock soon after. The stock was successfully traded on the New York Stock Exchange for some time, but through a series of trades in the early 1920s, Saunders lost control of Piggly Wiggly® and had no further association with the company.

Despite Saunders’ departure, Piggly Wiggly® Corporation continued to prosper as a franchiser for hundreds of independently owned grocery stores operating under the Piggly Wiggly® name.