Up to this time, customers at the typical grocery would have their orders filled by clerks. All merchandise was not individually packaged and priced and was stocked in shelves behind counters. The clerk filling a customer's order would have to measure out various quantities of foods and sack them up. Obviously, this was a very labor-intensive and time-consuming process.

At the self-service Piggly Wiggly, customers entered through a turnstile, grabbed a basket and walked through aisles of pre-packaged and price-marked merchandise. Items would be paid for at a checkout stand located near the store's exit. Clarence Saunders patented his self-service grocery format in 1917. Most of his competitors had converted to this store model by the late 1930s.

This MALL HALL OF FAME feature will start with an abbreviated history of the supermarket. Hopefully, the most important details will be included. Those seeking a more detailed history of the American food retail business may want to consult "A Quick History of the Supermarket" on the excellent GROCETERIA site.

http://www.groceteria.com/about/a-quick-history-of-the-supermarket

For our article, we zero in on the supermarket as it related to early car culture shopping centers and shopping malls built in the USA during the 1950s and '60s. The story should probably begin with the introduction of the so-called self-service food market. This took place September 6, 1916, in Memphis, Tennessee. Clarence Saunders, a River City entrepreneur, opened the original Piggly Wiggly market, which was the first in the nation to operate with the so-called "self-service" format.

A vintage trademark for Piggly Wiggly "self service" stores. At the company's zenith in 1932, there were two thousand six hundred and sixty. However, hostile takeovers resulted in several locations being divested. Today, Piggly Wiggly is headquartered in Keene, New Hampshire and oversees the operation of stores in seventeen states.
Graphic from http://www.pigglywiggly.com

Above and below are vintage views of Piggly Wiggly Store Number One, which was located in Memphis, Tennessee.
Photo from Library of Congress

Although it may not look like much today, Piggly Wiggly stores such as this revolutionized the food retail industry in the early 20th century.
Photo from Library of Congress

The American self-service grocery store was followed by the first so-called supermarkets. Early models were somewhat larger than the standard 1,000 square foot grocery and offered items at discounted prices. The idea was to make money not so much by large profits made on individual items but from smaller profits garnered by selling en masse...or on a much larger scale.

It has now been established that the nation's first supermarket opened in the Queens borough of New York City on August 4, 1930. Michael J. Cullen's 6,000 square foot King Kullen store set a new standard in the industry by establishing the discount food format, arranging items in individual departments and providing on-site automobile parking for customers.

At first, King Cullen's retail rivals -such as A & P, Kroger and Safeway- balked at the adoption of the supermarket-style store. However, a severe economic depression necessitated their acceptance of the price-based format.

New York City's King Kullen chain was another merchandising maverick of the early 20th century. Officially recognized by the Smithsonian Institution as America's first supermarket operator, the chain, headquartered in Bethpage, New York, operates stores throughout Long Island.

Graphic from http://www.kingkullen.com

King Kullen Store Number One opened in August 1930 and was located in the Jamaica neighborhood of New York City's Queens borough. The building had previously housed an auto repair garage. 

Photo from http://www.kingkullen.com

The number of stores operated by America's large grocery chains -i.e., A & P, Kroger, Safeway and Grand Union- peaked in the late 1920s. In the 1930s, as the supermarket-type store came into its own, grocery chains were consolidating several smaller grocery stores into single supermarket operations. Hence, a particular chain's actual number of locations dropped during this time.

As America became increasingly auto-oriented during the 1920s and '30s, the car culture shopping center was born. Among the earliest was Kansas City's, Missouri's COUNTRY CLUB PLAZA. One of its first tenants was Wolferman's, a local gourmet grocery chain that opened On The Plaza in January 1924.

Another early car culture retail complex, Columbus, Ohio's GRANDVIEW AVENUE SHOPPING CENTER, began business in 1928. It featured four grocery stores; A & P, Kroger, Piggly Wiggly and a local chain known as Polumbos.

At the close of World War II, the budding supermarket industry, whose development had been delayed by The Great Depression and a global conflict, was poised for major expansion. The auto-oriented shopping center, which had evolved in the 1920s and '30s as a center city fixture, began to be built in suburban locations.

EARLY POST-WAR SHOPPING CENTERS AND THEIR SUPERMARKET TENANTS:

*CRENSHAW CENTER, Los Angeles, CA (November 1947) Von's supermarket

*PARK FOREST PLAZA, Village of Park Forest, IL (December 1949)

Jewel supermarket (1950)
*SOUTHGATE CENTER, Milwaukee, WI (September 1951) Krambo 
supermarket

A rendering of Wolferman's, the nation's first Shopping Center Market. It opened in early 1924, at Kansas City, Missouri's COUNTRY CLUB PLAZA. The upscale food store was also noteworthy for its on-site bakery, which produced the chain's famed English muffins. Wolferman's exited the food retail business in 1972.

A photo of Washington, DC's historic CONNECTICUT AVENUE PARK & SHOP, an early strip center. The 59,000 square foot complex, dedicated in December 1930, originally housed A & P and Piggly Wiggly grocery stores. 

Photo from Library of Congress

Zooming up to the post-war period, we come to the new-fangled, regional-class shopping center, with its large, multi-story department stores and acres of free parking. In this snapshot is Von's (spelled with an apostrophe in 1947), which was a charter tenant at Los Angeles' CRENSHAW CENTER.
Photo from http://s11.photobucket.com / "DCGrocery"

Another innovative, post-war retail hub was Chicagoland's PARK FOREST PLAZA. In this exterior view, we see its Jewel Tea Company supermarket, which opened in 1950. The store, and shopping center, were noteworthy at the time for having central air-conditioning.
Photo from Malls of America Blogspot

An interior view of a mid-century market, from January 1957.

Photo from Library of Congress / Thomas O'Halloran

The suburban shopping mall debuted in the early years of the post-war era. America's first bona fide mall, Seattle, Washington's NORTHGATE CENTER, held its official grand opening April 21, 1950 and included an IGA Foodliner supermarket as one of its tenants. 

America's second retail mall, Greater Boston's SHOPPERS' WORLD, opened for business October 4, 1951. The center did not include a supermarket in its original retail mix. However a Stop & Shop was eventually added. It welcomed its first shoppers on October 4, 1961.

The third mall in the United States, Southern California's LAKEWOOD CENTER, was officially dedicated October 3, 1952. Its Hiram's supermarket had opened for business in November 1951, followed by a second food retailer, Boys Market, which had logged its first sale in April 1952.

OTHER EARLY OPEN-AIR MALLS

AND THEIR SUPERMARKET TENANTS:

*STONESTOWN CENTER, San Francisco, CA (July 1952)

Stonestown Market (November 1952)

*LEVITTOWN CENTER (SHOP-A-RAMA), Bucks County, PA (October 1953)

Penn Fruit supermarket (1953) and Food Fair supermarket (1955)

*SUNRISE CENTER, Fort Lauderdale, FL (January 1954)

Food Fair supermarket

The nation's first regional-class, fully-enclosed mall, Edina ["uh-diy-nuh"], Minnesota's SOUTHDALE CENTER, held its grand opening October 8, 1956. It featured a 30,000 square foot Red Owl supermarket, reputed to be the largest in the Upper Midwest at the time. America's early interior malls almost always included a supermarket as a customer drawing point.

OTHER EARLY ENCLOSED MALLS

AND THEIR SUPERMARKET TENANTS:

*BIG TOWN MALL, Mesquite, TX (February 1959)

Wrigley's supermarket

*CHARLOTTETOWN MALL, Charlotte, NC (October 1959)

Colonial Stores supermarket

*NORTH STAR MALL, San Antonio, TX (September 1960)

H-E-B supermarket

Before long, large supermarket chains and major shopping center developers had formed partnerships. Cincinnati's Kroger Company and Cleveland's Jacobs, Visconsi, Jacobs Group co-built Fairview Park, Ohio's WESTGATE CENTER (1954). Kroger and Youngstown, Ohio's Edward J. DeBartolo Corporation developed centers such as Indianapolis' LAFAYETTE SQUARE (1968) and Greater Youngstown's SOUTHERN PARK MALL (1970).

Philadelphia's Food Fair chain formed its own development subsidiary, Food Fair Properties, which built Miami, Florida's 163rd STREET CENTER (1956) and Baltimore's REISTERSTOWN ROAD PLAZA (1962). New Jersey's Grand Union grocery conglomerate also delved into shopping center development.

New Jersey's A & P chain operated stores in many a mid-century American shopping mall. 

Graphic from The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company

A circa-1880 A & P store. The grocer debuted in 1859, under the heading of Gilman & Company. A name change, to the Great American Tea Company, was done in 1863. This morphed into the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company in 1869. In 1915, there were 16 hundred locations. By 1930, 16 thousand were in operation. During the 1950s, A & P entered a downward spiral, soon relinquishing its position as America's largest grocery chain. On November 25, 2015, the once-mighty grocer went out of business.

Photo from Wikipedia / Grubbxdn"

An example of a mall-based A & P. This location opened, as part of Muscle Shoals, Alabama's SOUTHGATE MALL, in August 1968. The original complex also housed a Winn-Dixie supermarket. 

Above is a rendering of mid-20th century Food Fair. Stores built during this time frame were known for their distinctive pylons which soared several feet into the air.
Drawing from Food Fair Annual Report 1951

Here we see a Safeway store from the same era. Newly-built Safeways also had towering pylons.
Drawing from Wikipedia / "Decimal 10"

Stop & Shop Stores originated in Somerville, Massachusetts, in 1914. At the time, the fledgling chain was known as the Economy Grocery Stores Company. The location depicted here was added to SHOPPERS' WORLD, America's second shopping mall. The grocery opened for business in October 1961.

Above we have our first Shopping Mall Supermarket physical layout. Greater Detroit's innovative NORTHLAND CENTER housed a mallway-connected Kroger supermarket. The first NORTHLAND stores, including Kroger, were officially dedicated in March 1954.

First National Stores opened a freestanding supermarket at Yonkers, New York's CROSS COUNTY CENTER in April 1954. This layout depicts the mall as it was configured after its basic footprint was completed, in 1958.

America's first enclosed mall supermarket was opened by Krambo Food, at Appleton, Wisconsin's community-class VALLEY FAIR CENTER. The Wisconsin-based chain, absorbed by Cincinnati's Kroger conglomerate in June 1955, had opened a VALLEY FAIR store in March of the same year. Stores were rebranded under the Kroger nameplate in 1963.

SOUTHDALE CENTER, America's first regional-class, fully-enclosed shopping mall, included a supermarket under its roof. The mall -and its Red Owl market- opened for business in October 1956. The store moved out of the SOUTHDALE mall in 1973, relocating to a freestanding store in the shopping center's periphery.

The Red Owl chain was based in Hopkins, Minnesota. Its first store, in Rochester, Minnesota, opened in 1922. Red Owl was originally a subsidiary of the Northstar State's Gamble-Skogmo conglomerate.
Photo from Library of Congress / John Margolies

Out in the Lone Star State, Houston's Henke & Pillot competed with the Weingarten's chain. Henke & Pillot's first store opened -in Houston- in 1882. Weingarten's first dated to 1901. "Henke's" MEYERLAND PLAZA location is depicted above, which opened for business in October 1957. The chain had been acquired by Cincinnati's Kroger conglomerate in May 1955. Henke & Pillot stores were finally rebannered, under the Kroger name, in 1966.

A more recent physical layout depicts Southwestern Ohio's DAYTON MALL as it was configured at its 1970 grand opening. The original shopping facility included a mallway-accessed supermarket; in this case, a Dayton-based Liberal. Originating in the Gem City in 1921, the Liberal chain operated forty-eight stores at its peak in 1970.

We wanted to include some type of supermarket physical layout with this article. Here we have "A Blueprint for the Future", which was a circa-1970 prospectus from A & P. By this time, the chain was not building many mall-based stores...so it is unclear whether -or not- this store prototype was ever used for one.

The veritable A & P chain, which in 1930 had operated sixteen thousand grocery stores and was the nation's largest retail chain, was in decline by the 1950s. It had been bumped out of the number one retailer spot by Sears Roebuck and Company, with its store count having been reduced to four thousand five hundred.

Although it has been opined that the A & P chain was slow in establishing suburban stores during the 1950s, the chain WAS forward-thinking enough to locate its supermarkets in several of the nation's earliest shopping malls. Checking through the web pages of the MALL HALL OF FAME, we can see there were A & P stores in the following retail centers;

*THE MALL, St. Matthews, KY (1962)

*NORTHWAY MALL, Allegheny County, PA (1962)

[store opened as part of the McKNIGHT SHOPPING CENTER in 1953]

*GLEN BURNIE MALL, Anne Arundel County, MD (1964)

A & P's mall store lead was quickly followed by its major competitors across the Forty-eight States. Primary examples were as follows...

Idaho-based Albertsons opened its first location, in Boise, in 1939. By 1964, there were one hundred stores under the corporate umbrella. The chain grew exponentially via acquisitions and a short-lived partnership with Skaggs Drug Centers. In January 2006, five hundred and sixty-four Albertsons stores were sold to Minnesota-based SuperValu, Incorporated. 

Graphic from Albertsons Stores

ALBERTSONS JUNIOR-ANCHORED SHOPPING MALLS:

*HOLIDAY VILLAGE CENTER, Great Falls, MT (1959)

*COTTONWOOD MALL, Holladay, UT (1962)

*CAPITAL HILL MALL, Helena, MT (1965)