What Grocery Stores Used To Look Like
Since most of us walk into a grocery store with our minds fixated on the items needed to fill up the fridge and pantry, it’s rare that we take the time to marvel at the wonders of modern food shopping. Whether it’s a small neighborhood mart, a chain supermarket, or a gargantuan superstore, today’s grocery stores offer a dizzying range of brands for any given product, allowing discerning shoppers to make a choice based on price, ingredients, or even packaging. All necessary (and unnecessary items) can be wheeled in a cart to a checkout line, where a friendly employee will happily tabulate the items and accept various forms of payment. There are also self-checkout stations, where you can scan your items yourself and be on your way even faster.
Of course, such a process would have been completely alien to early humans who relied on hunting and gathering their food. And it likely would be fairly shocking even to the people accustomed to earlier forms of food shopping. Here’s a look at what grocery stores were like before the rise of Publix, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and the other popular stores we frequent today.
Country and General Stores
According to Michael Ruhlman’s book Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America, the earliest grocery depots in the U.S. were the country stores that surfaced in the 17th century. Along with offering a limited supply of culinary staples such as sugar, flour, and molasses, these markets provided a smorgasbord of other necessities of colonial America, including hardware, soap, dishes, pots, saddles, harnesses, shoes, and medicine. By the early 19th century, these stores — originally constructed from logs and mud — were largely replaced by newer frame buildings, which contained cellars that were large enough to house casks of whale oil and also cool enough to store eggs, butter, and cheese.
By the middle of the 19th century, the general store was a common sight across the small towns of the expanding United States. Similar to the country store, general stores stocked goods that both satiated hunger and catered to other crucial needs of paying customers. Food items included coffee beans, spices, honey, oatmeal, and dried beans, many of which were kept in barrels and required measuring the desired amount on (often inaccurate) scales. The stores also offered nonedible wares, including cloth, buttons, undergarments, hats, lamps, rifles, and ammunition.
Normally featuring at least one large display window, these stores were typically packed with goods piled high on shelves and tables amid the boxes and barrels stuffed into available spaces. A front counter displayed smaller items as well as such contraptions as a coffee grinder, scales, and the cash register. As general stores typically doubled as community centers, they were usually fitted with a stove to warm inhabitants during cold-weather months and often featured chairs for those who planned to stay and chat.
Even so, general stores were neither the most comfortable nor the most sanitary places. Customers often dragged in dirt and animal waste from the unpaved roads outside, while cast-iron stoves could produce a layer of soot over the displayed wares.
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Early Grocery Stores
Although the term "grocery" referred to a tavern or a saloon through much of America's early history, it came to signify the emporiums that were appearing in more densely populated urban centers by the late 19th century.
These grocery stores typically carried around 200 products, and occupied 500 to 600 square feet of floor space. As with general stores, these shops featured items piled high on shelves, with clerks reaching for everything presented to them on a list and continuing to measure out both liquid and solid goods from barrels.
Although most proprietors were willing to offer a line of credit, a precursor to today’s credit cards, unlike today they provided limited choices by stocking only one type of each product. Also unlike most modern grocery stores, these early shops largely sold dry goods, meaning customers typically needed to make separate trips to a butcher, bakery, and produce peddler to round out the full array of dining needs.
A&P, Piggly Wiggly, and the Rise of Chain Stores
The grocery model began to change when the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, owners of the A&P grocery chain, opened the first of its "economy stores" in 1912. Along with eliminating the credit lines and free delivery offered by independent retailers, A&P stores became known for offering popular brands such as Eight O'Clock Coffee.
The Tennessee-based Piggly Wiggly chain introduced additional innovations to the model with the opening of its first store in 1916. Most groundbreaking was its procedure of "self service." While goods still lined the lone aisle that snaked through the store, they were now within reach of customers who picked out the price-marked items themselves instead of delegating the responsibility to a clerk. The customers then placed the item in a wood basket — also a novel feature — before bringing everything to a checkout counter.
The streamlined processes resulted in lower costs for customers, and in turn produced an explosion in sales for retailers. The number of grocery chain stores increased from 24,000 to around 200,000 between 1914 and 1930, with the biggest, A&P, accounting for 16,000 of those outlets.
The First Supermarkets Appeared in the 1930s
Although the 1920s saw the rise of "combination stores" that provided a wider range of meats, produce, and dairy products under one roof, the first true supermarket arrived with the opening of New York City's King Kullen in 1930.
A former employee of the Kroger chain stores, Matt Cullen decided to launch his new enterprise in a slightly more remote section of Jamaica, Queens. The location allowed for cheaper real estate, which meant that Cullen could open a larger store and provide space for the machines that were transforming American lives: automobiles.
The first King Kullen covered 6,000 square feet and offered 10 times the amount of food products as most existing markets, much of which was sold out of packing crates. It was soon surpassed by New Jersey's Big Bear, which featured a 15,000-square-foot grocery surrounded by areas leased to vendors selling tobacco, cosmetics, and auto parts.
Although other features of the contemporary shopping experience had yet to be invented — shopping carts arrived in the late 1930s, the barcode system in the 1970s — the blueprint for the modern grocery store was in place, with supermarkets eventually expanding to stock 50,000 items, and colossal chains swelling to a footprint of more than 200,000 square feet.
Nowadays, as we casually stroll down the block-length aisles of superstores beneath towering shelves of colorful boxes, examine the fine print on packages in the organic section, or nibble on the free samples of cheese and dumplings, we can spare a thought for the evolution of this essential part of everyday life.
