Remember when your supermarket trips looked like this?

Nowadays we are spoilt by choice when it comes to buying our weekly groceries.

We can choose local markets, head to the supermarket or even sit at home and order whatever we want online.

It wasn’t always the way.

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It was in September way back in 1916 the first true Supermarket was opened. It was the Piggly Wiggly in Memphis, Tennessee.

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Before then, and even for a long while after, while supermarkets were still opening in regional areas, it was usual for an assistant to serve you from behind a counter. 

So why the change from the personalised service? With women joining the workforce and the fact they had refrigerators in the homes it was now possible to shop weekly instead of daily. Not to mention the amount of products on supermarket shelves these days! Can you imagine how long it would have taken to do a big grocery shop like we do today?

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The introduction of supermarkets also saw the decline in other things. Milkman home deliveries, for example. Early supermarkets didn’t sell meat either, but that has sure changed too. Less of the grow your own, and make your own!

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Modern day supermarkets pretty much sell anything you can think of these days. Now they have their own bakery sections, and sell everything from alcohol, furniture and homewares, beauty products, and clothing, all on top of your everyday food requirements.

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If you believe what the old advertisements had to say, there was an interesting variety of products for sale in those days too. What do you remember stores selling they wouldn’t today? Health food, what health food?

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What was your favourite shopping experience while growing up? What do you remember you could buy in those days? Where did you do your shopping?