Remembrance: Military Representation Through Public Art at the State Capitol.Among its many exhibits is a replica of a Piggly Wiggly store. Meanwhile Saunders’ former mansion, the Pink Palace, is a museum. Today there are still Piggly Wiggly stores throughout the South, franchised to independent owner-operators under a myriad of arrangements. The Sole Owner chain closed during the Great Depression. On December 15, 1929, a week after winning the NFL championship, the Green Bay Packers lost to the Sole Owner Tigers, 20-6.
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To promote his grocery store chain, Saunders even organized a professional football team known as the Sole Owner Tigers. In fact, he had a tendency to build them right across the street from Piggly Wiggly stores. You are only the sole owner of your name.”) Sanders ran his Sole Owner stores-as they were known-quite aggressively. (Saunders apparently got the name because a bankruptcy judge once admonished him by saying “You, sir, own nothing. Saunders did not quit, and later started another grocery store chain called (oddly enough) Clarence Saunders: Sole Owner of My Name. For a while, the grocery store chain was led by a Nashville man named James Bradford (who later started a Nashville brokerage house called J. Piggly Wiggly stores remained open, but no longer under Saunders’ management. Ford refused to meet with the two men from Tennessee (which gives you some idea of how important Henry Ford was at that time). In a final effort to retain control over his company, Saunders and Tennessee Governor Austin Peay went to Detroit to ask Ford Motor Co. But on Wall Street, his plot backfired, and Saunders went from wealthy to destitute overnight. Although the explanation of what occurred is very complicated, here is a brief summary: Saunders borrowed millions of dollars in an attempt to buy control of his own stock.
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However, in 1923 Saunders lost control over Piggly Wiggly after a complicated series of events involving ownership of the company’s stock. By 1922 there were 1,200 Piggly Wiggly locations in the U.S., about half owned by the company and the other half by franchisees. He built a massive mansion of pink Georgian marble, appropriately named the Pink Palace.Ĭustomers flocked to Saunders’ stores, and he took his company public within a couple of years after its founding. “Your dollar at Piggly Wiggly will not help pay the BAD DEBTS of others,” one Tennessean ad said.Īnd from where did Saunders get the name? “It took me two hours to find a name that was ridiculous enough,” he later said.Īs his chain and wealth grew, Saunders developed a reputation of flamboyancy in Memphis. And the stores operated on a “cash only” basis. Piggly Wiggly advertised heavily, much more so than any mom-and-pop grocer could possibly do. The stores had one-way aisles to expedite traffic. Each store was identical, with each product in the same location in each store. Saunders set up his store to be completely different. Additionally, most grocery stores extended credit to their customers. If the clerk had six people waiting, the customer had to wait for those ahead of them in line to be served. Customers would walk in the door and give their lists to a clerk, who would retrieve their items. He moved to Memphis and, in 1916, opened his first Piggly Wiggly store, changing the face of grocery stores in the process.Īt the time most grocery stores were owner operated. Saunders learned the grocery business as a young man in Clarksville in the early twentieth century. The rise and fall of Memphis businessman Clarence Saunders involves Piggly Wiggly, the Pink Palace, the New York Stock Exchange, Sole Owner Stores and (as a footnote) the Green Bay Packers.
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