How Piggly Wiggly Revolutionized Retail Shopping
Self-service shopping had to be invented
by David Wilson
For nearly all of human history shopping at a store or market looked a lot like what you might see in an old Western movie: You entered the store and either told the clerk what you wanted or, if you were the more prepared type, handed the clerk a written shopping list. The clerk would then go about the store and gather the items that you wanted. This included measuring out dry goods like sugar or rice and putting it into bags.
There were inherent inefficiencies with this arrangement. Smaller stores struggled if there was a surge of customers who had to wait for clerks to become available. Larger stores, especially in urban areas, had to hire small armies of clerks at great expense to serve ever growing numbers of customers. Yet if the store was slow you still had to pay the clerks who stood idle.
That a solution to these problems with traditional stores arose in the early years of the innovative 20th century is not surprising; however, that it came from an unassuming corner of middle America, rather than the established commerce capitals on the east coast, was perhaps unexpected. Even more so, that it had the funny name, “Piggly Wiggly.”
“The obscure we see eventually…
