Not to be confused with Penny’s Super Market, Piggly Wiggly had two locations in St. Louis Park, both on Minnetonka Blvd.
In 1940, and perhaps as early as 1935, it was located at 4000 Minnetonka Blvd., although the address was given variously as 4020 W. Lake Street, 4000 Minnetonka Blvd. and 4106 Minnetonka Blvd.
The first Piggly Wiggly store opened in 1916 in Memphis. It was the first self-service grocery store in the country, introducing the concepts of checkout stands, shopping baskets, and self-service, instead of relying on clerks to fill orders. Skeptics abounded, but the first stores were so successful that tickets were needed to get in.
The company did not generally own stores, but supplied the name and services. Speculation is that the St. Louis Park store was a branch of an operator in Minneapolis who had been doing business there for several years – a 1928 business directory lists 31 stores in Minneapolis. Unfortunately, because of the franchise structure, the company has no records of individual stores. As for the name, founder Clarence Saunders saw some pigs wiggle under a fence once (or so the story goes), and decided on the name then.
The store was replaced by a Penny’s Super Market in the 1940s.
A photo from the Tax Assessor (below) shows that in 1960 there was a Piggly Wiggly store at 6312 Minnetonka Blvd. (at Dakota), which had been the site of a Penny’s Super Market. It was gone by 1963, and perhaps earlier.
Piggly Wiggly stores still exist today.
