The History of Piggly Wiggly

Piggly Wiggly was founded by Clarence Saunders in 1916 in Memphis, Tennessee. At the time, shoppers would present their orders to clerks, who then gathered the items from store shelves. Saunders saw this method as inefficient and expensive, so he came up with a solution by creating the first self-serve grocery store! Saunders opened the first Piggly Wiggly location on September 6, 1916. It included shopping baskets, open shelves, and no clerks to shop on the customer’s behalf — at the time, it was a revolutionary concept. Although there were predictions that his novel idea would fail, Saunders’ Piggly Wiggly became a success! He soon issued franchises to hundreds of grocery retailers and the Piggly Wiggly chain grew. Piggly Wiggly Corporation then became the owner of all Piggly Wiggly properties and the company was traded on the New York Stock Exchange. However, due to a series of trades in the 1920s, Saunders lost control of his company and had no further association with Piggly Wiggly after that point. Still, the network of Piggly Wiggly franchises that he had built continued to thrive. Why he chose the unusual name remains a mystery; there is some evidence that Saunders chose it specifically to pique people’s interest. Today, there are over 500 Piggly Wiggly stores located in 18 states.