Market Disrupted: How Piggly Wiggly Revolutionized Grocery Shopping

Mental Floss ^ | no idea | Jeff Wells

[Lorianne]

[NonValueAdded]

And Walmart is offering tbe old model of placing your order and pucking it up.

[Nifster]

Loved my local PW growing up

[Calvin Locke]

And Walmart is offering tbe old model of placing your order and pucking it up.

Probably still want to cater to Americans. Have you been to a Walmart recently? It's like going to the third world.

[Ann Archy]

I remember shopping with my mom and they would weigh out the flour, the sugar, etc., and when they brought in grocery carts OMG it was unbelievable!!

[shelterguy]

They had the best bakery.

[real saxophonist]

If you watch the movie ‘Close Encounters’, there’s a Piggly Wiggly truck headed toward Devil’s Tower. There are no Piggly Wigglys in Wyoming or Colorado.

[ebshumidors]

There is a replica of the original piggly-wiggly store at the pink palace museum in Memphis.

[Grimmy]

Heh.

I’ve never thought about the evolution of shopping methods before. That was quite interesting.

Thanks for posting that article.

[knarf]

And in 1932

[SamAdams76]

My first experience at a Piggly Wiggly was in 1975 while visiting my grandmother in Alabama. She lived deep in the hollows of Sand Mountain in northern Alabama and very rarely ventured into "town" - which was about 20 miles away as she pretty much lived off her land, canning her produce in hundreds of Mason jars and keeping venison, chicken and quail in a deep freezer (and a stocked catfish pond that she would often send me to with a fishing rod). But occasionally she did have herself driven to the supermarket to get odds and ends.

I was 12 years old and remember laughing out loud when we pulled into a Piggly Wiggly. What a stupid name! But once inside, I saw that it was a supermarket that rivaled anything I had back in the sophisticated North. I especially remember the green and beige checkered tiled floor and how cold it was inside due to the air conditioning (something my grandmother never bothered with, despite nearly eight months a year of 90 degree weather). I got her to buy me a case of Dr. Pepper, which was a soft drink that was not yet available up North. And a couple bags of pork rinds as well.

[Bubba Gump Shrimp]

It probably depends on the local store I would reckon.

Ours is clean and very well maintained.

The bathrooms are cleaner than many restaurants in the area, that’s for sure.

[N. Theknow]

Louis Grizzard once wrote that Piggly Wiggly is now old enough to be renamed Hoggly Woggly.

[Bubba Gump Shrimp]

We had some PW’s around the Chicago area years ago, I thought them out of business, but we stopped in a local Butera food store a few weeks back, and they had Piggly Wiggly water on sale.

[seowulf]

Mom and Dad used to talk about the “Jot ‘em down” store they went to.

They would go into the store and the clerk would ask, “Whut can uh git fer ye?” They would tell him, he’d go get it, then ask, “Whut else fer ye?” Then he would go get it, and repeat until the shopping was done.

[deport]

Mid 1950s image based upon some of the cars in the photo.

[SamAdams76]

I’m sure it is. I searched for a 1970s era photo but this was closest to what I remember back in 1975. I know the cars in the parking lot are 1950s but I remember the store signage being still like that.

[Yaelle]

I completely get how wonderful this really is. When I first lived in France all the shops had different categories, produce, or dairy, or meat. And you had to tell the clerk what you wanted and how much it would weigh. In kg and in French. When I first got there, it was pretty hard to shop!

[Davy Crocket]

My dad worked for Piggly Wiggly!!

[Nifster]

Yes they did