The icon indicates free access to the linked research on JSTOR. When Clarence Saunders patented the “self-service” grocery store in 1916 and created the Piggly Wiggly, he was setting us on a path to the modern supermarket. In Saunders’s vision, shoppers could move around aisles and select their own purchases rather than depending on a shopkeeper to retrieve them. The next step was the expansion of such stores to offer a larger range of goods than the average shopper could carry in a basket.
