
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.” Regardless of his inspiration, he succeeded in finding a name that would be talked about and remembered. 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. Saunders’ reason for choosing the intriguing name “Piggly Wiggly®” remains a mystery he was curiously reluctant to explain its origin.
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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.ĭespite Saunders’ departure, Piggly Wiggly Corporation continued to prosper as a franchiser for hundreds of independently owned grocery stores operating under the Piggly Wiggly® name. Piggly Wiggly Corporation became the owner of all Piggly Wiggly® properties – the name, the patents, etc., and Saunders began issuing company stock soon after. 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. There were shopping baskets, open shelves, and no clerks to shop for the customer – all of which were previously unheard of! Operating under the unusual name ‘Piggly Wiggly®’, it was unlike any other contemporary grocery store. 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.ĭespite predictions that his novel idea would fail, Saunders’ first store opened on Septemat 79 Jefferson Street in Memphis. In grocery stores of that time, shoppers presented their orders to clerks who then gathered the goods from the store shelves. The buttery options weren't dissimilar from the oil based spread available in the UK, accept they came in tubs roughly three times the average size.Piggly Wiggly®, America’s first true self-service grocery store, was founded in Memphis, Tennessee in 1916 by Clarence Saunders.

In the US such barbarism would barely raise an eyebrow, so regularly are the four-sided cow derivative placed on food items including grits (corn slop) and salads.

Two years ago potato enthusiasts in the UK were appalled when a picture of a portion of chips crested by a cheese single emerged, apparently sold at Birmingham City football ground for £4. What I thought was a classic block of cheddar was in-fact a deluxe $10 wedge of slices, similar in heft and shape to a duty-free cigarette cartoon, except probably more deadly.

When I wandered into the Walmart dairy aisle I found it stacked with dozens of different kinds of sliced cheese, all vibrant orange and yellow colours. If you've spent any time in the US, then you've probably had some terrible cheese.Īlthough there is now a booming artisan industry in the States, the cost of getting high end European dairy over due to taxes and regulations around pasteurisation means fare in the average American supermarket is very different to that in the UK.
