![]() Observers called it a total union victory and a winning first round against Piggly Wiggly’s treatment of its unionized workers. The Sheboygan complaint by UFCW against Piggly Wiggly was backed in May by a 60-page decision by a National Labor Relations Board administrative law judge, and by Clevert’s order to Piggly Wiggly to make the workers whole and refrain from further such action. District Judge Charles Clevert’s ruling against Piggly Wiggly in May, and other impending complaints against Piggly Wiggly around Wisconsin. Local media in Wisconsin largely ignored the dispute, U.S. Piggly Wiggly’s anti-union stand is the real meaning of its truncated statement June 12 of the Sheboygan closing, observers say. ![]() National and Quebec labor boards had ordered Walmart to bargain with its workers in those two cases. In Jonquiere, Quebec, the retail monster closed its store rather than bargain with UFCW Canada, which had organized it.Īnd in Texas, when a small group of meatcutters organized, again with UFCW, Walmart closed all of its meatcutting operations nationwide. PigglyWiggly’s defiance echoes that of the world’s largest and anti-union retailer, Walmart, in both Quebec and Tyler, Texas. 1, throwing all 108 workers into the street, rather than submit to a federal court ruling that it broke the law by cutting 19 workers from full-time to part-time in violation of its United Food and Commercial Workers contract requiring negotiation of such moves. – In an anti-union hard line reminiscent of Walmart, Piggly Wiggly announced it would close its Sheboygan, Wis., store on Sept. He later tried to introduce concepts like Keedoozle and Foodelectric, fully automated grocery stores, didn’t take off. But he wasn’t done redesigning the grocery business. As a result, he lost control of it early in the 1920s. According to Piggly Wiggly, not long after he franchised the Piggly Wiggly idea Saunders started issuing public stock in the company. Though his model quickly took off, he wasn’t at the helm for very long. The year after the first store opened, Saunders secured his concept with a series of patents belonging to his Piggly Wiggly Corporation. “One story says that, while riding a train, he looked out his window and saw several little pigs struggling to get under a fence, which prompted him to think of the rhyme.” Another option is branding, Piggly Wiggly writes: “Someone once asked him why he had chosen such an unusual name for his organization, to which he replied, ‘So people will ask that very question.’” “He was curiously reluctant to explain its origin,” Piggly Wiggly’s corporate history reports. “One day Memphis shall be proud of Piggly Wiggly… And it shall be said by all men… That the Piggly Wigglies shall multiply and replenish the earth with more and cleaner things to eat,” Saunders said a few months after the store’s opening, according to Freeman.Īs for the name, nobody knows. By the end of that first year there were nine Piggly Wiggly locations around Memphis. 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. Saunders’s model cut costs by cutting out the clerks. Even chain stores used clerks.Īlthough 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. Before Piggly Wiggly, groceries were sold at stores where a clerk would assemble your order for you, weighing out dry goods from large barrels. This enthusiastic greeting was necessary because Saunders was trying something completely new. ![]() A brass band serenaded the visitors in the lobby.” “Newspaper reporters posing as contest judges awarded five and ten dollar gold coins to every woman, while the supply lasted. “At the door Saunders shook their hands and gave to their children flowers and balloons,” Freeman writes. 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. But its founder Clarence Saunders was clearly onto something-today, self-service grocery stores are the norm. Its founding is one of the stranger stories in the history of retail. Today, the chain has more than 530 stores across 17 states, according to its website. On this day in 1916, the first Piggly Wiggly opened in Memphis, Tennessee. The one question is why their innovator named the first one Piggly Wiggly. Self-serve grocery stores saved shoppers money and made financial sense. ![]()
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