This is an IHeart podcast.

And we continue here with our American stories.

Grabbing a basket while grocery shopping may seem second nature today, but the idea

was once groundbreaking, and that was far from the only thing that changed when Piggly Wiggly,

the first modern American supermarket opened over a hundred years ago.

On September 6, 1916, hundreds of curious shoppers came out for the opening of a new grocery

store at 79 Jefferson Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee. And we broadcast here in Oxford, Mississippi,

Memphis is only one hour, practically due north. For weeks, they'd seen billboards and read

newspaper ads about this grocery store with the funny name that promised an entirely new shopping experience, one that would, according to its owner, forever change the retail grocery business.

Greg Hangler sat down with Mike Freeman near the location of that first Pigley-Wiggly in downtown Memphis.

Mike Freeman is the author of Clarence

Saunders and the founding of Pigley-Wigley, the rise and fall of a Memphis Maverick.

I took a job at a restaurant in downtown Memphis that happened to be at 79 Jefferson,

and that was the first location of the Pigwood Street. It was an interesting fact.

You know, I became interested in that. My employer wanted me to do some research because he was curious as well, you know, what happened in the building and such.

It's important to know what Saunders did differently was in the old days if you went into a store to shop,

you couldn't just reach out and pick out your own groceries.

You had clerks do that for you.

So he had to wait for them to, you tell the clerk what you want, and then they would bring it to you.

And Saunders thought, well well this is really slow this is so

inefficient and all this tied in with brand advertising before the turn of

century yet all these brands we still recognize catalog cereal van

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