Oppe was recognized this week as the Chamber of Commerce of the Mid-Ohio Valley’s Business Person of the Year, with chamber leaders citing his work during the pandemic and his continued involvement in community feeding programs and other organizations in the community. “I’ve worked for the last 27 years, seven days a week.” “For six months, I’m not going to do anything,” he said. After that, he said, he’s retiring, “at least for now,” and spending time with his children and grandkids. Oppe is staying on a while longer to help with the transition and holiday activities the stores support each year. The Cash Saver the Oppes owned in Spencer was sold to local buyers in March, Oppe said. “We started with one, we’ve had as many as 10 (stores), and we’re at five right now,” he said. Oppe purchased the Vienna Foodland in 1995. “Some of these people have been with me going on 27 years,” he said. Oppe said making sure the employees were taken care of was an important factor. They buy from the same supplier and intend to keep the Piggly Wiggly name, as well as the approximately 220 employees at the five stores. Oppe confirmed the new owners plan no immediate major changes. “It was an opportunity for us when Jim said he wanted to sell,” Martin said. The difference between these and the other stores are Oppe’s are open and fully operational at startup, he said.Įach of the stores has a great location, he said The company, with the Oppe groceries, will have 20 stores, Martin said. ![]() The origin remains a mystery, but when Clarence Saunders was once asked why he picked the name, he simply responded: “So people will ask that very question.“Definitely we got things we want to do,” he said. ![]() “Supermarkets played a huge role in our economy and the development of our society and now there are other things sharing that spotlight.”īut while the history and legacy of supermarkets is clear, one thing is not: How Piggly Wiggly got its peculiar name. “It’s a continuous thing, a continuous movement of where people shop and how they like to shop, he says. ![]() Of course, as technology changed the game inside the store, it changed the game outside, too, with online grocery shopping escalating in popularity so much that more than a third of online shoppers are expected to buy their groceries online in 2016. That idea has continued all the way from early 20th-century signs to electronic systems that individually identify shopped in the store in order to advertise to them personally. “The whole idea of in-store merchandising became important with Piggly Wiggly,” Stanton says. The Queen was reportedly “bemused by the grocery cart’s little collapsible seat,” saying “it is particularly nice to be able to bring your children here.”Ĭhildren in supermarkets drastically changed the game of branding, with designers able to place food at kids’ eye levels, making it easy for them to woo their parents into various purchases. Job Opportunities We are always looking for people with smiling faces, who love to take care of our customers. It was such a marvel that in 1957, during a visit with President Eisenhower, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip visited a Maryland grocery store for 15 minutes to see what it was all about. Throughout the ‘50s, the supermarket proved itself an American phenomenon, Stanton says. After the war, the popularity of refrigerators and automobiles for nearly every household kept feeding the model, so much so that free parking became a necessity at every supermarket. For supermarkets, losing one or two people didn’t put the chains out of business. Supermarket success continued to prove fruitful during World War II when thousands of small grocery stores had to close as their employees went off to war. Some contention still surrounds whether Kullen or Saunders founded the first supermarket, but the opening dates suggest Piggly Wiggly was, in fact, the original. Other supermarkets popped up as well, with King Kullen opening in 1930 in Queens, New York, and Safeway and Kroeger grocers adapting to the new normal. Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter
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