The world's first supermarkets, stores incorporating both the self-service and cash-and-carry theories of merchandizing were the Piggly Wiggly stores designed by Clarence Saunders of Memphis, Tennessee. The stores had only one aisle, which began at the entrance and wound back and forth to the exit, passing every single item in the store. Once in a Piggly Wiggly store, the customer had to pass every product in order to get out again. Can you imagine? What would happen if you forgot something on that first pass through?

You can get an idea of the maze here:


Saunders kept developing new ideas for supermarkets. In 1941, he made plans to open a chain of Keedoozle stores, in which each shopper would carry a kind of pistol-shaped electric key; the foods would be displayed behind glass, like food in an automat, and the customer would stick the key in a slot beneath the product and pull the trigger.



The product and size would be printed on a perforated paper tape inside the pistol, and the customer would give the tape to the cashier who would feed the tape into a machine. This would activate a machine in the storeroom, which would begin loading bags, helped by employees. Conveyor belts would carry the orders to the front of the store. "Keedoozle" is a word coined by Saunders for a Key Does All for the grocery shopper.



The war got in the way of the Keedoozle stores, and Saunders died before he could perfect his Foodelectric stores where customers would bag their own groceries and then add up their bill using a special small-sized calculator.