Chicago’s first five stores opened in June of 1918. Saunders immediately franchised Piggly Wiggly stores nationwide. Saunder's 1917 patent for a self serving store Also gone were the troublesome credit accounts. Turnstiles and fencing ensured the customer couldn't escape without paying. Customers moved through the aisles and the clerk remained at the cash register. However shopping changed forever when Memphis grocer Clarence Saunders patented the “self-serving store” in 1917. Today you can still get groceries delivered and small food stores are an important part of Chicago. The delivery cost about three percent and the credit two percent of the bill. The milkman and vegetable seller likely came directly to your house. Perhaps the groceries were delivered, but you would certainly stop off at the butcher shop and the bakery on the way home. Signage, also considered "modern," is lacking. Cash registers, scales and refrigerated cases were all considered modern.
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Months later, after a series of escalating demands and threats to cut off credit, the man of the house stopped by to put a few dollars towards the account. The clerk totaled up the goods and charged them to the family’s account. While the clerk was scooping navy beans out of a barrel and grabbing packages of crackers, the lady chatted with her neighbors. In those sexist times, the lady of the house, or perhaps a maid, would give the clerk a list. Merchandise was safely behind the counter. Stores carried no more than a few hundred boring items. Frank Baum's Princess Ozma of Oz was the only person with a video phone. Grocery shopping 100 years ago was very different.
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You pull out your video phone, point it at the soft drink display, call home, and demand to know “EXACTLY what kind of grape soda do you want?” Finally, you push your shopping cart full of needed and unneeded items to the front of the store, pay and carry everything home. People less honest than you or me may taste a grape or even slip something into a pocket. Childlike, you not only test the 43,844 items with your eyes, but you pick them up, shake them, compare weights and set them back down. You let your eyes roam from brightly colored box to brightly colored box. Perhaps when you go to the supermarket, you run from aisle to aisle with preplanned precision, picking up only those items you need and finish shopping in the 10 minutes you have allocated. Wooden Barrels, Continued: Technology That Changed Chicago.
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In his last years Saunders was working on an even more intricate mechanism - the Foodelectric. It was found that the machinery was too complex & expensive to operate. After that he started another grocery chair, called the Kedoozle, an electrically operated store. The depression hit these stores in 1930, & they went bankrupt & he was broke again. Saunders came back, however, In 1928 he started a new grocery chain called the Clarence Saunders, Sole Owner of My Name, Stores, Inc. This resulted in eventual bankruptcy for Saunders & he was finally forced to step out of the Pigp]y Wiggly Company. At this point the Exchange suspended further trading & postponed the short sellers' delivery deadline. The stock went up wildly, reaching a high of 124. His buying campaign was an attempt at a corner. He supplemented his own funds with a loan of about ten million dollars from a group of bankers. When a group of bears began selling Piggly Wiggly short to force the price of the stock down, Saunders began a buying campaign to support the price of the stock in order to protect his own investment & that of other Piggly Wiggly stockholders. By 1922 the stores had flourished so that its shares were listed on the N.Y. as the last man who engineered a real corner in a nationally traded stock. ANNALS OF FINANCE about Clarence Saunders of Memphis, who in 1919, founded the Piggly Wiggly Stores, a chain of retail self-service markets situated mostly in the South & West, with headquarters in Memphis.
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