The modern self-service grocery store is so deeply ingrained in our day-to-day lives that it's easy
to forget that Americans didn't always shop this way. A century ago the task of buying food for
your family underwent a radical revolution. This is the untold truth of Piggly Wiggly.
Piggly Wiggly's concept was as inspired as its name.
Both were the brainchild of Memphis businessman, Clarence Saunders. He helped grow a couple
of retail and wholesale grocery businesses before coming up with a brand new way to shop.
In 1916, the rising cost of groceries was a problem. At that time, grocers went through
the store themselves to fill a customer's order. Sometimes they even delivered the
order to people's homes. Saunders worked out that prices were high because stores had too
many employees from clerks to delivery boys who were paid to goof off whenever business was slow.
Saunders thought, if customers could pick the groceries themselves it would be a cheaper way
to run a store, and the savings could be passed on to the customer. At the time,
this self-service style of grocery shopping was so new that Saunders needed to pitch the idea in
newspaper advertisements. And then, the store had its grand opening on September 6th, 1916.
He touted the cost savings, the convenience, and the freedom found in the Piggly Wiggly shopping
experience. No longer would clerks select stale items for customers, or choose the most expensive.
With freedom of choice as a selling point, Saunders stocked his first store with more
than 1,000 different products which was about four times as many as traditional stores at the time.
According to Time magazine, the self-service concept also brought with it shopping baskets,
employee uniforms, and prices labeled on every item. A Piggly Wiggly in Oklahoma
would roll out the first shopping cart in 1937. It had two shopping baskets, one above the other,
and attached to a metal frame on wheels. The chain also introduced refrigerated
cases and the business model of selling at a high volume with a low profit margin.
Piggly Wiggly was also one of the first franchises to create TV commercials that
clamoured for customers' attention to purchase their goods. As Time magazine reported,
"[Self-service grocery shopping] meant consumers could make decisions
as to what it was they wanted to buy, and that really led to companies trying to
catch consumers' attention. It's really the origin of branding."
Saunders also innovated the impulse purchase,
by putting candy and other impulse items at the checkout stands.
Saunders' new way to shop was tremendously successful. He had opened nine stores within his
first year of business. Seven years in, Saunders led a $100 million company with 1,268 stores.
Piggly Wiggly historian Mike Freeman, author of the book Clarence Saunders and the Founding of
Piggly Wiggly, described Saunders as someone who liked a surprising turn of phrase over the bland.
That might tell you everything you need to know about why Saunders chose the name "Piggly Wiggly."
He certainly wasn't going to give anyone a satisfying answer when asked about the name.
He said once it was, quote, "plucked from originality," and another time said it was,
in his words, "from out of chaos." Competitors laughed at the name,
saying it brought to mind a, quote, "carnival house for tots" more than a grocery store.
The Piggly Wiggly website claims the name came to Saunders on a train ride,
when he looked out the window and saw several pigs trying to wiggle under a fence.
In his book, Freeman speculated that Saunders may have been inspired by
the old nursery rhyme that starts, "Higgledy piggledy, my fat hen."
It's also possible that inspiration came from a regular feature in a Memphis newspaper titled,
"Uncle Wiggily's Adventures." Freeman explains,
"Clarence Saunders had found a name so unique,
everyone would remember it and identify it with him."
"All right. Piggly Wiggly. Then home. Nowhere else."
Piggly Wiggly was born in the South in 1916, then grew so fast it was in every region of
the U.S. by the end of 1918. By 1923, Piggly Wiggly was the third largest retail grocer
in the U.S. The chain wasn't able to maintain its dominance for long, however.
Piggly Wiggly stores were held by various franchise owners, and other big chains
started buying them out. Safeway acquired more than 200 stores in California from
the Piggly Wiggly Western States Company in 1929. Before that, Kroger had snatched up
all the Piggly Wigglys in Memphis and Mississippi, plus several other stores
in the southeast. Kroger also took over the 31 Piggly Wigglys in Columbus, Ohio.
Today, Piggly Wiggly's name is on a relatively modest 500 or so storefronts in 17 states
and most of them are in the South. These numbers include stores operated by a separate company
called Piggly Wiggly Midwest which has 96 Piggly Wigglys in Wisconsin,
mainly. The southern Piggly Wigglys are branded by parent company C&S Wholesale Grocers.
Comedian and actor Bill Murray was just being his offbeat,
goofy self when he was caught by TV cameras at a college basketball game in 2019
wearing a Piggly Wiggly trucker's cap. Murray calls South Carolina home,
which has dozens of Piggly Wiggly stores, so the look actually made some sense.
Piggly Wiggly's famous mascot is a pig donning a butcher's hat. Mr. Pig's face can be found on just
about everything associated with Piggly Wiggly, including his namesake store-brand soda. However
in 1998, he was redesigned to be a little bit thinner, in order to improve his customer appeal.
Piggly Wiggly embarked on its first national TV ad campaign in 1997. The ads came with the tagline,
"Down home, down the street," which played up the chain's rural, small-town identity.
The campaign was a response to the rise of large, impersonal superstores.
Company president Larry Wright said at the time,
"There is a place in people's lives for a traditional supermarket, one that is friendly
and convenient like Piggly Wiggly. It's time to make the neighborhood store mean something again."
CBS 42 in Birmingham, Alabama interviewed a longtime employee
during a report on a neighborhood Piggly Wiggly closing its doors.
"We can't keep up with the big boys — Publixes, Walmarts, whatnot. They would offer more,
but we like to pride ourselves in how we treat our customers."
Mike Freeman tells it in his Piggly Wiggly history, the store's founder required employees
to be courteous and polite in order to separate themselves from the unscrupulous grocers who still
pulled items off the shelves for their customers and took advantage of them while doing it.
Today, politeness and courtesy still define the Piggly Wiggly way of doing business. Except now
Piggly Wiggly is the old-fashioned one, trying to create some wiggle room
for friendliness among the Publixes and Walmarts of the grocery world.
"Oh the Piggly Wiggly! I love the Piggly Wiggly!"
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