At the turn of the twentieth century, grocery retailing was still dominated by small, independently owned stores operating under what was commonly known as the “service” or “credit-and-delivery” model.
In this system, goods were kept behind a counter; clerks retrieved items upon request; and purchases were frequently charged to customer accounts and delivered to the home. Even early chain grocers followed this pattern.
The Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (later rebranded as A&P), one of the earliest and most expansive chains, initially operated in a manner broadly similar to independent retailers, differing more in scale and purchasing power than in retail format.
In 1912, A&P launched its first “cash-and-carry” store, eliminating delivery service and customer credit in favor of lower prices. The chain expanded on this model with its line of Economy Stores, though many locations still retained elements of the service model.
At roughly the same time, chains aggressively promoted private-label goods, particularly when manufacturers attempted to impose fixed resale prices. These early adjustments signaled a broader shift away from the personalized, service-oriented grocery toward a streamlined, price-driven retail environment.
A more decisive transformation came with the rise of self-service. In 1916, Piggly Wiggly opened in Memphis, introducing a store layout in which customers selected goods directly from shelves before proceeding to a cashier.
These stores were sometimes dubbed “groceterias,” reflecting their similarity to the self-service cafeterias then gaining popularity.
By the 1920s, this approach converged with another innovation: the consolidation of formerly separate retail functions — dry grocery, produce, meat, dairy, etc. — under a single roof.
The store often credited as the first true supermarket, King Kullen, opened in 1930 in Queens, New York. It embodied the defining characteristics of the modern supermarket: self-service, distinct product departments, aggressive price advertising, and a business model built on high-volume sales and discounted margins.
These developments placed enormous pressure on independent grocers and the wholesalers who supplied them. Many small retailers responded by forming cooperative purchasing alliances in order to increase buying power and compete with national chains. The Independent Grocers’ Alliance (IGA), founded in 1926, exemplified this strategy.
Nonetheless, by the 1930s large chains increasingly embraced and consolidated the supermarket model. A&P began closing thousands of its smaller service stores in favor of larger supermarket units, sometimes replacing five or six traditional storefronts with a single, centralized operation.
By 1938, A&P had opened approximately 1,100 supermarkets. Nationally, the number of supermarkets rose from roughly 1,200 in 1932 to more than 3,000 stores across forty-seven states by 1936.
In Glens Falls, NY, for example, these national trends were clearly visible. The Mohican Company, advertising locally as early as 1912, offered an expansive range of goods from fresh lamb and produce to condensed milk, oysters, and canned tomatoes. By the late 1920s, A&P was firmly established in the city.
These chains were soon joined by additional regional and local competitors, including Grand Union, L.C. White, and the Original Supermarket. Their newspaper advertising grew increasingly prominent.
Marketing was often direct and competitive, with rival stores’ promotions appearing side by side on the same page. Such advertising campaigns were not merely promotional; they reflected the chains’ superior buying power and their capacity to under-price both small retailers and the wholesalers who supplied them.
Consumer behavior reinforced these structural changes. As households – particularly women, who performed most domestic shopping — embraced convenience foods and time-saving strategies, the supermarket’s combination of self-service, one-stop shopping, and lower prices proved compelling.
A Glens Falls wholesale firm like John Liddle Co., which was “devoted entirely to the interests of the individual grocer,” was structurally dependent on the survival of small, service-oriented stores.
Once those retailers began to disappear or consolidate, the intermediary role occupied by firms such as the John Liddle Co. became increasingly untenable. The Liddle company, which had operated since 1917, went out of business in 1939.
In this respect, the company’s decline was not merely local misfortune but part of a national realignment in food distribution, as vertically integrated chains and supermarkets supplanted the older triumvirate of manufacturer, wholesaler, and independent retailer.
Read more about the History of Supermarkets in New York.
This essay was drawn from the National Register of Historic Places Registration For for Liddle Warehouse in Glens Falls, recently nominated to both State and National Registers. You can find the full document, including footnotes, here.
Illustrations, from above: A traditional grocery store in which the proprietor provided the goods over a counter, 1920; Seeman Brothers Grocery Store in NYC, 1905 (Museum of the City of New York); the first Piggly Wiggly Store, Memphis, Tennessee, opened 1916, Clarence Saunders photo from 1918); an A&P Market (economy store) on New Scotland Avenue in Albany (later Restaurant Navona), 1938; and the produce section at the first Wegmans in Rochester in the 1930s.
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