Death of a Civilization: The End of American Self-Service Grocery Stores

In 1916, entrepreneur Clarence Saunders invented America’s first self-service grocery store, a truly revolutionary idea that swept across the country and then the world. Now, a little over a century later, the American self-service grocery store is dying, but not for a reason anyone could have predicted.

More about Clarence Saunders and his remarkable idea, from the Piggly Wiggly website:

Piggly Wiggly®, America’s first true self-service grocery store, was founded in Memphis, Tenn. in 1916 by Clarence Saunders. Back then shoppers would present their grocery orders to clerks who then gathered the goods from the store shelves. Saunders, a flamboyant and innovative man, noticed that this method resulted in wasted time and expense, so he came up with an unheard of solution that would revolutionize the entire grocery industry: he developed a way for shoppers to serve themselves.

Despite predictions that this novel idea would fail, Saunders’ first store opened September 6, 1916 at 79 Jefferson Street in Memphis. Operating under the unusual name Piggly Wiggly, it was unlike any other grocery store of that time. There were shopping baskets, open shelve and no clerks to shop for the customer—all unheard of!

Smithsonian Magazine describes the peculiar and innovative way Saunders launched his new store:

Saunders was a bit of an iconoclast. For the store’s opening ceremonies, writes Mike Freeman for the Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Saunders promised to hold a “beauty contest” that he advertised in local newspapers. “At the door Saunders shook [women’s] hands and gave to their children flowers and balloons,” Freeman writes. “Newspaper reporters posing as contest judges awarded five and ten dollar gold coins to every woman, while the supply lasted. A brass band serenaded the visitors in the lobby.”

This enthusiastic greeting was necessary because Saunders was trying something completely new. Before Piggly Wiggly, groceries were sold at stores where a clerk would assemble your order for you, weighing out dry goods from large barrels. Even chain stores used clerks. 

Although the chain store model helped keep costs down, the University of Michigan Library writes, the “small army of clerks” necessary to fill orders were expensive, the university writes, and at least part of that cost was passed on to the consumer.

Saunders’s model cut costs by cutting out the clerks. Shoppers on that first day did see some employees stocking shelves, Freeman writes, “but they politely refused to select merchandise for visitors.” Just like today, a shopper picked up a basket (though Piggly Wiggly’s were made of wood, not plastic) and went through the store to purchase everything. By the end of that first year there were nine Piggly Wiggly locations around Memphis.

Over the next 100 years, American grocery stores went from this:

To this:

Even the toothpaste is locked up.

An increasing number of American stores are, effectively, no longer self-service, as most of their products have disappeared behind locked cages and cabinets. If you want to buy one of these items, you need to track down an employee to unlock it for you. Far less convenient than the first Piggly Wiggly store in 1916. And the reason, of course, is theft, across the country in almost every urban area. In an article for the Daily Mail, one Ross Dress For Less store reported being robbed up to four times a day.

Shocking videos have laid bare America’s $100 billion-per-year shoplifting crisis, with brazen thieves strolling out of stores including Home Depot and Ross Dress for Less with their arms full of stolen goods.

Surveillance footage shows a gang of crooks wearing masks wheeling shopping carts loaded with valuable products out of a Home Depot store in New York.

Another clip showed shoplifters loading up duffel bags and backpacks with perfumes and colognes from a Ross store in Colorado.

Last year, videos and photos went viral depicting railroad tracks in Los Angeles covered in the remains of destroyed packages. Gangs of bandits systematically loot every freight train that passes through, keeping high-value items they want and discarding everything else.

A Walgreens in Chicago has just been renovated with top notch security, and it looks like something out of a Judge Dredd movie:

Customers select their items on an interactive screen, and then line up at a counter for employees to handpick the items. Yes, literally the opposite of that Piggly Wiggly store 100+ years ago.

It’s quite obvious the fabric of society itself is coming apart, and would take decades or even centuries to repair if it passes a certain point of decay. It’s hard to fully understand why our oligarchs are so indifferent to this decay, or actually encouraging it. This indifference seems to be shared by a large number of everyday Americans too, which is one of the final steps of the USA’s transition from a super power to an impoverished banana republic.

Meanwhile, Biden funnels money and resources into propping up the ongoing wars on the other side of the world in Syria and Ukraine. One last great cause to be proud of before the collapse.

Judge Dredd was supposed to be a parody of dystopian fiction, but it might just end up being reality. A Chicago local contacted Walgreens inquiring about the store’s renovations before it opened, and received this response:

A reader who lives near the Walgreens contacted the company after it shuttered for remodeling, wondering if the store had closed permanently. In mid-May, that reader sent us a copy of the response they said they received.

The response said the store was “undergoing a remodeling effort for Walgreens to test new concepts, technologies and practices aimed at bringing the community a greater convenience and safety for our customers, patients and team members.”

“This redesigned store will have the latest in e-commerce offerings to increase customer service, mitigate theft and increase safety for customers and employees—all the while, continuing to have a full service pharmacy for our patients.”

It went on to say the remodeled store will have “a new look and feel, focused on getting customers to place orders ahead of time digitally at Walgreens.com or in the Walgreens app for in-store Pickup. Customers who don’t place an order in advance will still be able to order in-store by placing orders from our kiosks—with Walgreens team members available to offer assistance.”

The store would also “include an ‘Essentials’ area where customers may shop for themselves from a selection of essential and convenience items.”

Really, that response is so absurd, it does sound like something a corporate spokesperson would say in a Judge Dredd comic or film.

On the bright side, elite “judges” battling armies of criminals with machineguns and rocket launchers does sound pretty cool.

Maybe we’ll get a real-life RoboCop too:

Ian Kummer

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