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Piggly wiggly myrtle beach1/9/2024 ![]() He later tried to introduce concepts like Keedoozle and Foodelectric, fully automated grocery stores, didn’t take off. But he wasn’t done redesigning the grocery business. As a result, he lost control of it early in the 1920s. According to Piggly Wiggly, not long after he franchised the Piggly Wiggly idea Saunders started issuing public stock in the company. Though his model quickly took off, he wasn’t at the helm for very long. The year after the first store opened, Saunders secured his concept with a series of patents belonging to his Piggly Wiggly Corporation. “One story says that, while riding a train, he looked out his window and saw several little pigs struggling to get under a fence, which prompted him to think of the rhyme.” Another option is branding, Piggly Wiggly writes: “Someone once asked him why he had chosen such an unusual name for his organization, to which he replied, ‘So people will ask that very question.’” “He was curiously reluctant to explain its origin,” Piggly Wiggly’s corporate history reports. “One day Memphis shall be proud of Piggly Wiggly… And it shall be said by all men… That the Piggly Wigglies shall multiply and replenish the earth with more and cleaner things to eat,” Saunders said a few months after the store’s opening, according to Freeman.Īs for the name, nobody knows. By the end of that first year there were nine Piggly Wiggly locations around Memphis. Shoppers on that first day did see some employees stocking shelves, Freeman writes, “but they politely refused to select merchandise for visitors.” 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. Saunders’s model cut costs by cutting out the clerks. ![]() Even chain stores used clerks.Īlthough the chain store model helped keep costs down, the University of Michigan Library writes, the “small army of clerks” necessary to fill orders were expensive, the university writes, and at least part of that cost was passed on to the consumer. Before Piggly Wiggly, groceries were sold at stores where a clerk would assemble your order for you, weighing out dry goods from large barrels. ![]() This enthusiastic greeting was necessary because Saunders was trying something completely new. A brass band serenaded the visitors in the lobby.” “Newspaper reporters posing as contest judges awarded five and ten dollar gold coins to every woman, while the supply lasted. “At the door Saunders shook their hands and gave to their children flowers and balloons,” Freeman writes. For the store’s opening ceremonies, writes Mike Freeman for the Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Saunders promised to hold a “beauty contest” that he advertised in local newspapers. But its founder Clarence Saunders was clearly onto something-today, self-service grocery stores are the norm. Its founding is one of the stranger stories in the history of retail. Today, the chain has more than 530 stores across 17 states, according to its website. i was employed with piggly wiggly for 8 years ,i enjoyed being ther receiver.if our store hadnt closed it being the last corp store they owned i would still be there. On this day in 1916, the first Piggly Wiggly opened in Memphis, Tennessee. Receiving Associate (Former Employee) - Myrtle Beach, SC - September 13, 2017. The one question is why their innovator named the first one Piggly Wiggly. The Piggly-Wiggly mascot was on hand for Wednesday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony.Self-serve grocery stores saved shoppers money and made financial sense. Readers of say there was a Piggly-Wiggly in Beckley in the 1950s and in Martinsburg around 1980. Piggly-Wiggly has supermarkets in 17 states and stretches as far north as Wisconsin and Minnesota.The new West Virginia stores aren’t the first ever in the Mountain State. Our prices and products are outstanding.” “I don’t know if it will be right away but there’s a lot of interest out there. “We are the first in West Virginia but I think you’ll see more in the future,” Johnson said. The Johnson family ran the Milton Foodland and the Galaxy grocery store in Hamlin - both of which are Piggly-Wiggly franchises - and Adam Johnson said he expects more of the franchises in the Mountain State. “A lot of people vacation in the south and they’re familiar with Piggly-Wiggly brand, and they’ve come and checked us out today. The first Piggly-Wiggly grocery store franchises in West Virginia since the 1980s have opened their doors, bringing a familiar sight to state residents used to seeing the chain when they vacation in the south, especially Myrtle Beach.Īdam Johnson, who’s managing the Milton store in Cabell County, said it’s great to open a business that already has some familiarity to customers. Piggly-Wiggly, a familiar sight to West Virginians when they head south on vacation, has now opened two locations in the Mountain State.
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