![]() Just like today, a shopper picked up a basket (though Piggly Wiggly’s were made of wood, not plastic) and went through the store to purchase everything. His Piggly Wiggly store removed unnecessary clerks, created elaborate aisle displays and rearranged the store requiring customers to view all of the merchandise. Saunders’ simple plan revolutionized the idea of the common supermarket. The concept of the “Self-Serving Store” was patented by Saunders in 1917. Before the Piggly Wiggly, products were placed on shelves behind glass counters, dry goods were weighed out from large barrels by store employees and bills were settled with credit or barter arrangements. With its characteristic entrance turnstile, customers selected goods for themselves right off the shelves and paid in cash. ![]() On September 6, 1916, Saunders launched the self-service revolution in the United States by opening the first self-service Piggly Wiggly store, at 79 Jefferson Street in Memphis, Tennessee. In 1902 he moved to Memphis where he formed a grocery wholesale cooperative. By the age of 19, he had graduated to salesman for a wholesale grocer. Saunders left school at 14 to clerk in a Clarksville, Tennessee grocery store. One of those ideas would change the world, another would banish him from the hall of immortals and the last would ruin him. Saunders would absorb the ideas of that region: the good, the bad, and the ugly. An area located inside the birthplace triangle of Jack Daniels, the Confederacy, and Thomas Jefferson. ![]() Clarence Saunders, the man who brought us the Piggly Wiggly grocery store chain, might be the most interesting man you’ve never heard of.Ĭlarence Saunders was born on Augto an impoverished family in Amherst County Virginia. ![]() This holiday, I decided to write about an eccentric American businessman who covers both subjects. The TV will most likely be tuned to either the news or to football. No doubt families will be bouncing words back-and-forth to each other off their big screen TVs with belts loosened and feet propped up on recliner footrests all over town. It’s Thanksgiving week in Indianapolis and all over the Circle City, Hoosiers are heading to grocery stores to buy turkey and all the trimmings. ![]()
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