This MALL HALL OF FAME feature will begin with a history of the American supermarket. As on other parts of this website, we present a visual picture and do not just talk about the subject matter.  Our fifteen Food Store Focus sections include all matter of retro grocery store ephemera. We also zero in on the supermarket as it related to early car culture shopping centers and shopping malls built in the USA. 

The supermarket story begins with the introduction of the so-called self-service grocery. Exactly who came up with this concept first is subjective. It is claimed that Hugh and Albert Gerrard opened the Triangle Groceteria -a self-service-type market- in Pomona, California, in 1915. Memphis, Tennessee's Clarence Saunders opened the first self-service Piggly Wiggly market on September 6, 1916. If Clarence Saunders wasn't the very first to operate a self-service food facility, he was the first to patent to idea.

Up to this time, customers at the typical grocery would have their orders filled by clerks. All merchandise was not individually packaged and priced and was stocked in shelves behind counters. The clerk filling a customer's order would have to measure out various quantities of foods and sack them up. Obviously, this was a very labor-intensive and time-consuming process.

At the self-service Piggly Wiggly, customers entered through a turnstile, grabbed a basket and walked through aisles of pre-packaged and price-marked merchandise. Items would be paid for at a checkout stand located near the store's exit. Clarence Saunders patented his self-service grocery format in 1917. Most of his competitors had converted to this store model by the late 1930s.