A History of Grocery Shopping

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

While discussing the history of Trader Joe’s, Dave Gardetta gives a history of grocery shopping:

For centuries food shopping worked this way: People would go to the produce seller or dry goods store, point to what they wanted, and someone behind the counter would retrieve the items. In 1916, a Tennessee-based dry goods chain called Piggly Wiggly did something revolutionary: It let customers touch the merchandise. Piggly Wiggly was the first to offer handbaskets; shoppers were now expected to gather their own grits and hominy. Like other advanced technologies of the era — speeding locomotives on the silver screen that left moviegoers diving for the aisles — Piggly Wiggly confused people. Some felt they were shoplifting. Soon enough, like a Valentino swashbuckler, the craze went nationwide.

But Piggly Wiggly sold only dry goods. You had to find a butcher for meat, a baker for bread, a greengrocer for produce. Larger cities often had one central municipal public market where these sellers congregated. In 1914 in Los Angeles, a 32,000-square-foot public market called the White Arcade, on the corner of Pico and Main, took that municipal model private and became the precursor to supermarkets.

What food stores lacked at the time, however, was parking. Service stations had parking, and superservice stations — gasoline sellers that incorporated businesses around their perimeters — had parking. In 1924, Glendale’s Ye Market Place fused the superservice station with the public market, combining food providers with a large parking lot. This was news: In one day 11,000 cars visited the Ye Market Place just to see what the future looked like.

By 1929, the Ralphs company had pieced together one of the region’s largest chains of grocery stores, some of which — including a palatial structure at 5615 Wilshire Boulevard on the Miracle Mile and a beacon-topped castle at 171 North Lake Street in Pasadena — could fittingly be called supermarkets. They were the first of their kind in the city. Though their baroque exteriors rivaled the majestic cinema fortresses on downtown’s Broadway, their vaulted interiors were plainly functional. An unusual display arrangement — long rows of uninterrupted shelving along which shoppers could move, picking what they wanted — became an industry standard. But it was the immensity of these food halls’ floor plans that stunned customers — as much as 10,000 square feet in size, or a bit larger than an average Trader Joe’s.

What a leap that was. In the history of commerce, nothing like it has been seen before or since: A transaction model common to Mesopotamia was done away with in 14 years. And Los Angeles was the epicenter. In 1926, the western chain Skaggs Cash Stores merged with the L.A.-based Safeway company, forming a group of 750 stores that would open still more supermarkets. Another chain, Young’s Market Company, decided it would branch away from downtown L.A., bringing elegant foods to the “distant” areas of the city — which in the 1920s meant transporting the ingredients for a Waldorf salad to the corner of 7th and Union in Westlake. (Young’s named the new supermarkets Thriftimart.) The Copenhagen transplant Charles Von der Ahe sold off his line of Vons Grocerterias in 1929; a few years later his two sons rebooted Vons into a supermarket company. By 1937, L.A. had a total of 260 supermarkets, more than most states could then claim. Parking lots were standard. Baked goods were standard. More food was available to consumers than ever.

Comments

  1. Jim says:

    You may enjoy this info graphic “The History of Grocery” — a lot of fun facts and information.

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