Piggly Wiggly Carolina Corporation

From CharlestonWiki

History of Piggly Wiggly

Piggly Wiggly was the first true self-service grocery store. It was founded on September 6, 1916 at 79 Jefferson Street in Memphis, Tennessee by Clarence Saunders. Piggly Wiggly Carolina is the francise in South Carolina owned by the Newton family (See Below)

In grocery stores of that time, shoppers presented their orders to clerks who gathered the goods from the store shelves; thus, only as many customers could be attended at once as the store had clerks.

In the Piggly Wiggly plan, customers entered the store through turnstiles and walked through four aisles to view the store’s 605 items sold in packages and organized into departments. They selected their goods as they continued through the maze to a cashier. Instantly, packaging and brand recognition became important to companies and consumers.

Without self-service, modern branded packaged goods would not exist. The concept of the "Self-Serving Store" was patented by Saunders in 1917.

Piggly Wiggly was the first store to:

• provide checkout stands.
• price mark every item in the store.
• feature a full line of nationally advertised brands.
• use refrigerated cases to keep produce fresher longer.
• required employees to wear uniforms.
• design and use patented fixtures and equipment throughout the store.
• franchise independent grocers to operate under the self-service method of food merchandising.

Piggly Wiggly Carolina

Piggly Wiggly Carolina currently has over 100 retail stores in or near the border of South Carolina with yearly sales of over $800 million dollars. Piggly Wiggly Carolina has a workforce of over 5,000 employees.

Diversification has been another important change in the Piggly Wiggly Carolina organization. Today it is active in many areas including Greenbax Enterprises, Newton Builders, Tri-State Printing and Stagecoach.

External Links

Piggly Wiggly Carolina Corporation website