This is an I-Heart 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 Pigley 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 changed 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 downtown Memphis that happened to be at 79 Jefferson,

and that was the first location of the Pigwoodery store.

It was an interesting fact.

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 grocery.

You had the clerks do that for you.

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

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