Clarence Saunders was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 grocer

Grocer

A grocer is a bulk seller of food. Beginning as early as the 14th century, a grocer was a dealer in comestible dry goods such as spices, pepper, sugar, and cocoa, tea and coffee...

 who first developed the modern retail sales model of self service. His ideas have had a massive influence on the development of the modern supermarket

Supermarket

A supermarket, a form of grocery store, is a self-service store offering a wide variety of food and household merchandise, organized into departments...

. Clarence Saunders worked for most of his life trying to develop a truly automated store, developing Piggly Wiggly

Piggly Wiggly

Piggly Wiggly is a supermarket chain operating in the Midwestern and Southern regions of the United States, run by Piggly Wiggly, LLC, an affiliate of C&S Wholesale Grocers. The current company headquarters is in Keene, New Hampshire....

, Keedoozle

Keedoozle

Keedoozle was the first fully automated grocery store, a vending machine concept developed by Clarence Saunders in 1937. "Keedoozle" is a word coined by Saunders for a Key Does All for the grocery shopper. The Keedoozle concept was intended to be a grocery shopper labor saving and cost saving...

, and Foodelectric store concepts.

Born in Virginia

Virginia

The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...

, Saunders left school at 14 to clerk in a general store

General store

A general store, general merchandise store, or village shop is a rural or small town store that carries a general line of merchandise. It carries a broad selection of merchandise, sometimes in a small space, where people from the town and surrounding rural areas come to purchase all their general...

. Later he worked in an Alabama coke

Coke (fuel)

Coke is the solid carbonaceous material derived from destructive distillation of low-ash, low-sulfur bituminous coal. Cokes from coal are grey, hard, and porous. While coke can be formed naturally, the commonly used form is man-made.- History :...

 plant and in a Tennessee sawmill before he returned to the grocery business.