how did super-sizing self-service in the 1930s create new design challenges for grocery stores?
Carl W. Dipman, ed. Modern Food Stores, NY: The Progressive Grocer, 1935, p. 21.
Compartmentalizing
In keeping with the understanding of self-service as a specialized form of retailing, some super markets continued to separate self-service grocery departments from the departments that could only work through counter service—such as fresh produce, deli, and butcher counters. This Big Bear super market shows a self-service grocery department on the right side with its own checkout booth. The right side of the store contains counter service items.
Mobilizing Merchandise
Larger store spaces made it possible to display mass merchandise, but sales were limited by what customers could carry. Larger stores encouraged experimentation with wheeled basket carriers. The shopping cart eventually became the standard tool for shoppers to collect their own merchandise, but there were lots of experiments in cart design to address spatial challenges such as storing idle carts and improving the efficiency of unloading merchandise at the checkout counter. Sylvan Goldman’s folding wheeled basket carrier addressed the problem of cart storage in smaller stores.
Checking Out
The checkout counter has always been the biggest design challenge for self-service stores. Clarence Saunders’ first design for Piggly Wiggly failed because of congestion at the checkout counter. Creating a centralized payment process was a key goal of self-service store design, but it was difficult to achieve that goal with mechandise that could not be sold through self-service methods. Fresh meat, for example, was cut-to-order at the butcher counter and during the 1920s butcher counters often had a separate cash registers in grocery stores because they operated as separate businesses within the store. Super markets worked to centralize all store payments in a single point of purchase at the checkout counter, which was the final stop on the self-service pathway. In 1969 Garth Close was awarded one of the last store patents for his pre-checkout area that enabled customers to fill more than one cart on a single shopping trip without having to wait a long time at the checkout counter.