Whet Your Appetite With This Quiz on Grocery History

The Sperry and Hutchinson or S&H catalog’s Green Stamp loyalty program rewarded grocery shoppers who collected stamps that could be redeemed for prizes. The business began in 1896 and achieved tremendous popularity by the 1970s. The program required customers to fill a stamp book with 1,200 points’ worth of stamps, which came in denominations of 1, 10, and 50 points.

Founded in 1969 and located across New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, Stew Leonard’s was dubbed the “Disneyland of dairy stores” by “The New York Times” due to the petting zoos, costumed characters, and animatronics located throughout the store’s seven locations. The store is also known for its customer-friendly motto: “Rule No. 1: The customer is always right! Rule No. 2: If the customer is ever wrong, reread rule No. 1.”

Despite Piggly Wiggly opening in 1916, the Smithsonian Institute considers King Kullen to be the first supermarket. King Kullen opened in the New York area in 1930 and became the first to fulfill the five criteria that define a modern supermarket: separate departments, self-service, discount pricing, chain marketing, and volume dealing. The chain became very popular and was known as the “world’s greatest price wrecker.”

June 26, 1974, was a revolutionary day in the grocery industry, as the very first price scanner was installed at a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio. The first purchase made using the scanner was a pack of Wrigley’s chewing gum. The system was a joint venture, with Spectra-Physics designing the laser scanner and a company known as NCR developing the computerized cash register.

Humpty Dumpty owner Sylvan N. Goldman debuted the shopping cart in 1937. Goodman had noticed that customers’ purchases were limited by the weight of their heavy handheld baskets, and created a prototype based on a folding chair with rolling wheels and two metal baskets in place of the seat. Customers were resistant at first, but Goldman hired models to advertise his invention and the cart became popular by the 1940s.

Ralphs was founded in 1873 by George and Walter Ralphs, brothers who got into the grocery business after George suffered an injury as a bricklayer. ALDI started in Germany when Theo and Karl Albrecht took over their mother’s shop. Wegmans opened in 1916 and was founded by John and Walter Wegman as the Rochester Fruit and Vegetable Company. Vons, however, was the brainchild of one man, founded by Charles Von der Ahe in 1906.

Piggly Wiggly redefined the grocery shopping experience when it opened in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1916. Before that, customers would pass a grocery list to a clerk who would fill their order, but Piggly Wiggly allowed shoppers to wander the aisles themselves for the first time. As for the origin of its odd name, when founder Clarence Saunders was asked why he chose to call the store Piggly Wiggly, he replied, “So people will ask that very question.”

In the 1980s, inventor David R. Humble noticed a customer growing agitated at the slow pace of a grocery cashier. Humble developed CheckRobot Inc., and sold a cobbled-together computer system to Publix Super Markets in Atlanta. At the time, Humble’s technology was more costly and time-consuming than traditional cashiers, but it served as the inspiration for more advanced self-checkout technologies.

Since opening its first grocery store in 1988, Walmart has grown to become the largest grocery provider in the United States by market share. The company combined groceries and merchandise with the introduction of Hypermart USA stores and then Walmart Supercenters.

The first Whole Foods opened in Austin, Texas, in 1978, though it was known then as SaferWay. SaferWay became Whole Foods Market in 1980, and expanded to other Texas towns as well as New Orleans beginning in 1984. The brand acquired grocery stores throughout the country to bring its organic products nationwide, and expanded internationally starting in 2002.

A&P is short for the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, and its origin dates back to 1859 in New York City. It began operating as a retail chain in 1869 and became a giant among American grocery chains before ultimately going bankrupt in 2016. After opening its first supermarket in 1936, the A&P ballooned to the largest food chain in the U.S. by the year 1969, and held that title until being surpassed by Safeway in 1973.

Before the advent of the credit card, grocery lanes were clogged up with shoppers writing out personal checks to pay for purchases. The payment method made up more than 50% of grocery purchases until the first American Express cards debuted in 1958. The first debit cards were issued by a California bank that same year.

“Supermarket Sweep” debuted on ABC in 1965, and exploded in popularity in the 1990s. The show featured three couples answering food-based trivia questions and running around the store trying to find certain grocery items. Though the set looked like a functioning supermarket, it was actually quite small and featured fake replicas in place of larger perishable items such as meat and cheese. The show was most recently rebooted in 2020 with comedian Leslie Jones as host.

Coca-Cola introduced the concept of a coupon in 1887, offering consumers one free glass of Coke. In 1909, the food company Post followed suit, distributing coupons for its Grape-Nuts cereal product. The Nielsen Coupon Clearing House was established in 1957, becoming the first company dedicated to coupon redemption, and in 1968 Valpax further revolutionized the coupon industry with its little blue envelopes containing coupons for local services.

Piggly Wiggly revolutionized the grocery industry in 1916, opening America’s first self-service grocery store in Memphis, Tennessee. The store’s founder, Clarence Saunders, even secured a patent for this self-service format. When asked why he chose such an unusual name for his stores, Saunders often replied, “So people will ask that very question.”

The concept of a 24/7 supermarket was unheard of in the 1950s. At the time, only 5% of grocery stores were open on Sundays. What’s more, most grocery stores were closed the majority of weeknights, only staying open late one night to serve customers.