money & economicsWikipedia1930 · Jamaica, Queens, New York, USA
The first true supermarket opened in Queens in 1930 by marking every price and selling food cheaply
The first true supermarket in the United States opened on 4 August 1930 in a former garage in Jamaica, Queens, New York. Its founder, Michael Cullen, a former Kroger employee, ran it on the logic of pile it high and sell it cheap. Before this, shoppers waited at counters while clerks fetched goods, measured out portions and haggled over prices, since prices were often not posted. Cullen's store displayed clearly marked prices, let customers collect their own goods in baskets, and combined separate food departments under one roof. Its rivals in Southern California and Texas made strong claims but lacked the low prices that define a supermarket.
Supermarkets make money on volume rather than margin. Low prices attract large numbers of shoppers, and self-service cuts the labour cost of having staff fetch every item. Displaying prices and stocking everything in one place speeds up shopping and makes large purchases feel routine.
The supermarket changed how food was bought and sold, replacing slow personal service with self-service and mass volume. The model spread quickly during the Great Depression, when shoppers became extremely price-sensitive. It also reshaped work, moving clerks into specialised stocking and checkout jobs.
The idea of a cheap, high-volume store followed a familiar pattern of a low-margin model winning by scale. Piggly Wiggly introduced self-service in 1916, and the grocery business later repeated the same move of cutting service costs to lower prices.
Cullen described his store as the world's greatest price wrecker.
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