Piggly Wiggly Food Centers, by then a subsidiary of Consolidated Foods of Chicago, along with Eagle Food Centers based in Milan, announced they would build a new store "designed to make shopping easier and more convenient." It would be built on the west side of the 400 block of South Main Street, just across Oak Street from the new Country School Restaurant which had opened in July of 1966. Ten years later, some people apparently didn't think the Tenney Street Piggly Wiggly building was as "adequate" as they would like. He said there was room for 14 more stores and thought he might move his Vogue women's clothing store (now the Kewanee Historical Society Museum) from its downtown location to Tenney Street. Just before the opening, Piggly Wiggly ran and ad in the Star Courier announcing "It's no secret - this will be the most colorful store in the Midwest!" Maxwell told the Star Courier he envisioned a "Tenney Village Shopping Center" in the east half of the 400 block of Tenney Street, most of which he owned. They were leasing property at 417 Tenney Street from Wayne Maxwell after deciding that a new, more adequate building could be built there that was "more worthy of a city like Kewanee." 7,1955, the company announced a change of plans. More: Kewanee Chamber of Commerce welcomes 3 new businesses to Kewaneeīut on Jan. The plan was to add 4,000-square feet of space to the roller rink building. A search of the Star Courier archives revealed that on June 3, 1954, the company announced plans to open a Piggly Wiggly Super Market on Routes 34 and 78 "on the south limits of the city on property now occupied by the Rainbow Garden Roller Skating Rink," at 718 Tenney St., roughly the location of the present-day Burger King restaurant. The location, just west of the intersection of Tenney and McClure streets, was not Piggly Wiggly's first choice. The night of the grand opening, and for the next two nights, a Hollywood-style searchlight scanned a long, tall beam back and forth in the sky over Kewanee. It is being torn down soon after becoming dilapidated.Ī redemption center was located in the main building at first, but soon expanded to space in the rear of the Kewanee Coca-Cola bottling plant nearby. The store also had a check cashing booth and gave out S&H Green Stamps.Ī more pristine building housed the Kewanee Piggly Wiggly in the 1950s and has also been the home to a lumber yard, a roller rink and a bowling alley. These things are normal today, but in the 1950s, they were revolutionary. Store clerks, or "bag boys" sacked the shopper's items while she (or he) went to the parking lot and drove their car back to the front door of the store where they were loaded into their car by the clerk eliminating what would otherwise be lengthy and numerous trips back and forth to the car.Īnother new twist was a self-service, pre-packaged meat department where shoppers could select products that were ready to go thereby saving time which could be spent browsing the aisles for other items to possibly buy. More: What will go into Kewanee's vacant Family Video building? What businesses are inquiring?Īlso introduced was a "unique" system for handling bags of purchased groceries. Among the innovations were mechanical checkout counters with conveyor belts to move purchases along.
The Piggly Wiggly had five "speedy and accurate" checkout lanes. Piggly Wiggly, based in Rockford, was building a whole chain new-era supermarkets -they owned 26 in the upper Midwest - where parking, shopping and selection would cater to the public's growing love affair with the automobile.
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