Piggly Wiggly was not the first self-service store, but it was the first to be awarded a patent as a machine for automatic selling in 1916. The chain’s extensive use of advertising in local newspapers and national consumer magazines made it the most influential self-service store of the early twentieth century.

Self-service stores first opened during the World War I era but, despite the fact that they were considered more efficient and profitable than counter-service stores, self-service did not become a common retailing method until after 1940. Self-service stores changed the way shopping had worked for centuries. It was challenging to rethink how stores should work.

Though chain stores used open displays to encourage customers to serve themselves, the systemized arrangement of stores to automate selling represented a specialized form of retailing before 1940. The most successful chain stores of the early twentieth century were organized for efficient clerk service, not self-service. Before 1940, self-service stores were primarily a small business innovation.

Although self-service store advertisements emphasized the freedom of choosing your own merchandise and the democratic ethos of serving yourself without having to wait for clerk service, many self-service stores originated in the segregated South. Self-service store designers used surveillance features and other methods to control the movements of workers and customers on the shop floor. An emphasis on the egalitarian aspects of self-service shopping over-simplifies the control features that defined self-service stores as machines for automatic selling.

It is tempting to look for the origins of supermarkets in large stores. But self-service systems were invented in small store spaces that typically outsold standard clerk-service stores. Supermarkets first appeared during the Great Depression. They represent a turning point, not a starting point, for understanding the history of self-service retailing.

Before the shopping cart, self-service store inventors experimented with a wide variety of strategies for mobilizing merchandise including turntables, conveyor belts, monorails, wheeled wagons, baskets attached to pulleys, and even drive-thru stores.

Self-service was a strange experience at first and shoppers had mixed reactions to it. Before 1940 self-service stores were far more popular in western and southern states than in other parts of the country.

Because the goal of self-service was to cut store expenses, it is easy to assume that self-service stores represented a cheaper form of retailing. But Piggly Wiggly was one of the most expensive store interiors to install in the early 20th century, and experiments to improve self-service methods were capital intensive.