Birth of the Supermarket

“His Ears Have Been Slashed -- His Toes Cut Off -- His Eyes Punched Out -- His Bones Broken and His Face Smashed.  A Description of What Has Happened to the ‘DEMON of HIGH PRICES.”[1]  Clarence Saunders revolutionized the shopping experience for Americans.  Several American television shows such as Little House on the Prairie, among others, portrayed a shopping experience in which the customer entered the general store.  The patron would request the items he or she wanted.  The employee would then obtain the goods from the stock and sell them to the client. His aim was to “MAKE IT POSSIBLE FOR YOU TO GET BY THE CHECKER’S DESK MUCH QUICKER AND WITHOUT ANY ‘JAMMING’ OF FOLKS BEHIND YOU.”[2]

Clarence Saunders created such advertisements and placed them into newspapers in an attempt to create the modern supermarket experience.  In Saunders’s supermarket, one could go into the store and browse the shelves and select from a wider variety of foods and brands therein.  He sought a more streamlined experience where the shopper could go at his or her own pace, select the exact products he or she wanted, and get out of the shop.  That contrasted to the traditional general store.  A qualitative approach examined the two opposing types of shopping that began with Saunders’s introduction of the more modern supermarket.

In his advertisement, Saunders spoke ill of the traditional market style as it was slow.  Using dramatic language, he spoke of his introduction of the supermarket with his new store, Piggly Wiggly.  He saw people lined up in a funeral line as mourners, mourning the end of the general store.  He spoke of the mourners having nervous tendencies, depressed due to the end of what they knew.  They had been under the tight grip of the “Demon of High Prices” as the people hungered and were required to pay large amounts just to sustain themselves.  But, he argued, Piggly Wiggly was going to give the consumer the power over his own purse.  Furthermore, the consumer would not have to haggle nor be faced with a clerk trying to pressure him to purchase anything he did not want to purchase. He would take a “free” cart around the store and fill it as he chose with the products he desired.[3]

Not everyone was as accepting as it seems Saunders would have hoped.  That was especially the case in the South where there was a movement against chain stores like the Piggly Wiggly even though the store itself began in Memphis, Tennessee.  The smaller country stores strongly opposed chain stores and supermarkets.  Immense amounts of pressure were also placed on newspaper companies to not sell advertisement space to the chain markets.[4]  State and local legislative bodies then began to place higher taxes on chain stores, based on the number of stores or employees that they had.[5]  Public opinion was even on the side of those who opposed chain stores as 63 percent of people wished to tax chain stores at higher rates than their non-chain counterparts.[6]  During the same period, attempts to institute a federal tax on chain stores failed.[7]

But parts of Saunders’s aims came true.  Through the economic process, Saunders was able to save shoppers money.  His new invention required less workers as goods were not delivered and shoppers did much of their own work by shopping on their own.[8]  That kept goods cheaper.  Furthermore, speed was a major selling point.  An ally of Saunders declared in a newspaper that 100 people could shop for themselves at a Piggly Wiggly and someone was leaving the store every 48 seconds because of the ease of self-shopping.[9]

But which side won?  Did supermarkets succeed, or did the independent country markets continue their dominance?  It is easy to look at the modern world to see.  The local markets have been replaced with supermarkets.  Dollar Generals dot much of the rural landscape as well.  But in the short term, Piggly Wiggly opened nine stores in the Memphis area during the first year after Saunders’s grand opening. More stores continued opening across the United States as franchisees purchased the rights to operate nearly identical stores outside of Memphis.[10] Disagreements over originality of ideas and plans of supermarkets ended up in court.[11]

Saunders definitely found success.  Within seven years of his creation of Piggly Wiggly, Saunders had opened over 1,200 stores. Those stores had also sold over $100,000,000 in groceries.[12]  Ultimately, Saunders lost his fortune, but he was able to create a phenomenon that changed the status of grocery shopping in the United States.

While Alfred D. Chandler Jr. stated that “modern industrial enterprise…carries out modern production processes,” Saunders developed a new way of distributing its products.[13]  He took what looked to be impossible and made it a reality as Marc Cenedella stated was what a leader does.

This was a localized movement that spread due to its success.  The business model worked.  It was not necessarily related to the more macro-forces that also took place during that time such as the creation of a Federal Reserve Bank nor government intervention into the markets.

 

Chandler, Alfred D., Jr.  Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism Boston: University of Harvard Press, 1990.

 

Freeman, Mike. “Clarence Saunders: The Piggly Wiggly Man.” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 51, no. 3 (1992): 161–169. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42627012.

 

Ryant, Carl G. “The South and the Movement Against Chain Stores.” The Journal of Southern History 39, no. 2 (1973): 207–222. https://doi.org/10.2307/2205614.

 

Saunders, Clarence.  “Demon of High Prices.” Box 1, Folder 12. Piggly Wiggly Grocery Store Collection. The Digital Archive of Memphis Public Libraries/ Memphis Public Library. https://memphislibrary.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16108coll17/id/308/rec/2.

 

 

 

 

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[1] Clarence Saunders, “Demon of High Prices,” Box 1, Folder 12, Piggly Wiggly Grocery Store Collection, The Digital Archive of Memphis Public Libraries, Memphis Public Library, https://memphislibrary.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16108coll17/id/308/rec/2.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Carl G. Ryant. “The South and the Movement Against Chain Stores,” The Journal of Southern History 39, no. 2 (1973): 208. https://doi.org/10.2307/2205614.

[5] Ibid., 208-213.

[6] Ibid., 214-217.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Mike Freeman, “Clarence Saunders: The Piggly Wiggly Man,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 51, no. 3 (1992): 161–162. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42627012.

[9] Ibid., 163.

[10] Ibid., 164.

[11] Ibid., 165.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Alfred D. Chandler Jr., Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism (Boston: University of Harvard Press, 1990), 14.