Interesting - I'm 81 and neither my wife or I have ever seen that, so one wonders if was only in the South, at first.
passing those savings on to their customers
A foreign concept to those pushing the self-checkouts. Everything is bottom-line oriented these days and anything saved goes into the corporate pocket. Sometimes they use the lame excuse, "It will keep prices from rising." but since you don't have access to the internals, you have to take their word for it. Yeah, right.
Coincidentally, I heard about Piggly- wiggly just this week on a radio blurb “Why Didn’t I Think of That?” Used to be prior to the ‘30’s you told the clerk I want ten pounds of beans,five lbs. of bacon, some ketchup, etc. and he would leave his register and get it for you in the warehouse out back. The owner brought the warehouse out front and let you get what you wanted. It was so novel, he copyrighted the idea and franchised it to A&P, Kroger and other big name groceries. Sears and other places bought into the idea. Not only did Mr. Piggly-Wiggly make his stores less expensive employeewise, but he gets residuals from the idea, itself.