Supermarkets have had long shelf life
Shoppers don’t know how lucky they are, writes Rachel Clayton.
It’s difficult to picture a world without supermarkets. No trolleys, no aisles, no nicely stacked bread loaves or 57 types of tea to choose from.
Petone Pak’n Save owner Leo O’sullivan has been in the supermarket business for more than 40 years and remembers a time when there was one type of coffee sold.
‘‘Faggs – that’s all there was and maybe one other,’’ he said.
This is the supermarket world he knew as a 20-year-old, before grocery aisles stocked tinned food metres high.
‘‘I’m only about 5 foot 5 and I could reach the top shelf,’’ he said.
‘‘At Pak’n Save now, we’re about building it high and watching it fly, I suppose. People have more to choose from in any one month than we were likely to get in a year.’’
This month supermarkets turned 101. On September 6, 1916, the world’s first self-service store, the Piggly Wiggly, was opened in Memphis, Tennessee.
Back then ‘‘self-service’’ simply meant people could take food off the shelves themselves, rather than handing over a list to a staff member who gathered everything from behind the counter.
Piggly Wiggly founder Clarence Saunders reportedly had the idea to organise the store into food departments, price-mark every item, use refrigeration to keep produce fresh for longer, and kit out staff in uniforms.
The first supermarkets in New Zealand appeared in the 1920s under the Four Square brand.
In February 1948, New Zealand’s first self-service Four Square grocery store was opened in Onehunga by Phil Barker and Ray Mcgregor.
Ten years later, the first Woolworths-owned Foodtown opened in Otahuhu with a 118-space carpark.
The first Pak’n Save opened in Kaitaia in 1985.
Since then supermarkets have offered more choice and convenience, incorporating a butcher, bakery, delicatessen, and Countdown has even started offering an in-store pharmacy.
Angela Tvrdeic, 83, started working for Countdown 30 years ago but can remember when the first supermarkets opened.
‘‘When I was young there was no such thing as supermarkets,’’ she said. ‘‘We used to order everything and it was delivered from the grocer, the butcher, the baker, the milkman. They left your bread in the bread box.’’
When the first supermarkets opened Tvrdeic would always tag along with her parents, hoping for a lolly or two.
‘‘I loved to go shopping. I didn’t care where we went as long as there were lollies,’’ she said.
Tvrdeic works at Countdown Greymouth in the Lotto store and helps shoppers at the self-service checkout.
‘‘You can’t compare it now. Supermarkets are just huge. Biscuits used to come in tins and you would have to climb a ladder to get them down,’’ she said.
Pak’n Save’s O’sullivan said a 1980s supermarkets never had baskets, and shoppers came in and got out as soon as they could.
‘‘It was just so busy. Now people tend to shop two or three times a week or even a day,’’ he said.
‘‘We’re still a supermarket but we’ve evolved into a lot more of a convenience operation. It’s gone the full circle.
‘‘We started off as a corner store, then we were big and impersonal, and now we’re like a big corner store again, your local. We have people come in every day to pick up their milk and bread.’’
One of the strangest things he’d ever seen sold was water.
‘‘Who would have thought water would have sold. I remember being in Australia and people said the next big thing was water. And we were going: ‘That’s just ridiculous.’
‘‘Now look at how many different brands of bottled water there are.’’
Something that hasn’t changed is the wandering of the humble trolley, he said. ‘‘They’ve stayed the same, we still find them in rivers and creeks.’’