Seattle’s first self-service grocery chain, Groceteria, opened its Broadway store in the Summer of 1916 at 233 Broadway E, just south of Thomas. It served the neighborhood along with Capitol Hill and Renton Hill stores for a decade before its surprising collapse.
Listen to Rob Ketcherside’s interview with NPR 88.5 KNKX about Seattle’s Groceteria stores and the tragedy of Alvin Monson, from Saturday January 6. It repeats on air Monday January 8 at 7 PM.
It started with retail innovation: Prior to the 1930s creation of supermarkets, food in America was sold at specialty stores focused on individual product types: green grocer (fruits and vegetables), fish monger, butcher, baker, and grocer for example. They were clustered in neighborhood business districts and shared space in public markets. Contrary to the name, only two of the dozen-odd public markets in downtown Seattle were publicly owned. But they all guaranteed one-stop shopping and easy access to streetcar lines. If a Seattleite couldn’t find what they needed near home, they could certainly get it downtown.
After the onset of World War One in mid-1914, inflation set in worldwide. This included a rise in the price of canned and packaged foods that were sold at grocery stores. Grocers immediately felt strain on their service-rich business model. Most stores offered purchase on credit, delivery by horse and buggy and ordering by telephone. Notably “cash groceries” offered no-frills purchases. The standard shopping experience was like a deli: shoppers asked for items at a counter and it was slowly filled from the back while they interacted with one of the many clerks. Stores filled their shelves with piecemeal deliveries by distributors and layers of middlemen.
Within a few years, self-service shopping at chain grocery stores upset the industry. If you know anything about self-service grocery history, then you believe that Piggly Wiggly started it all in Tennessee in late 1916. The Smithsonian believes that. Wikipedia believes that. But it’s wrong.
Self-service grocery chains actually started a bit earlier. The exact genesis hasn’t been yet told, but here’s my best take. In 1908 the discount chain Basket Stores opened its first store in Lincoln, Nebraska and grew to at least 70 stores. In 1912 the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company started its A&P Economy Stores, which added 1200 stores in 3 years in the eastern US. The first self-service stores on the West Coast were in late 1914 or early 1915 in Los Angeles. The concept of the still-new cafeteria — a restaurant where you pick your own food and pay at the end of the line — was applied to groceries, and the term groceteria was invented.
Article about Stoddart’s Mission Groceteria in Redlands, California from 1915 Los Angeles newspaper. Courtesy Tamara Bunnell.
Serendipitously, Capitol Hill Historical Society board member Tamara Bunnell’s great grandfather was one of those Los Angeles innovators. Here’s a clipping from a 1915 Los Angeles newspaper about his store in Redlands, a live/work building with the family residence upstairs. He also had a store in Los Angeles proper. Digitized newspapers indicate that the trend spread quickly in Los Angeles. Other 1915 examples have been found in Pasadena, Long Beach, Santa Monica and downtown LA.
Seattle’s Groceteria: Seattle’s first Groceteria opened in November 1915 in the White Public Market. That’s where the Gap is today at the corner of 5th and Pine.
Seattle’s Groceteria differed from the Los Angeles stores because founder Alvin Monson wasn’t satisfied with reducing the cost of retail labor. He looked at the entire enterprise in a way that no one on the West Coast was doing. He brought knowledge of Nebraska’s Basket Stores, personal experience with groceries, and the vision to build a grocery chain of his own at age 25.
Monson’s grocery career was young, but it was built on business experience that belied his own youth. Alvin Monson loved business. At age 14 he bought a still-rare car in 1906 and started a jitney service around town his rural hometown of Osceola, Nebraska (think of it as a one-man, app-less Uber). Monson lived with relatives to attend a business school in Chicago in 1910, where he thrived. After that he attended University of Nebraska-Lincoln for just a year.He struggled at the university in the broad range of coursework, only excelling at math. After dropping out of the UNL he returned home in 1913 and took over his father’s grocery store. Monson must have encountered Basket Stores during his year in Lincoln, and it apparently inspired him to take the idea further west.
Back in the small farming town he began experimenting with the grocery, mimicking the Sears-Roebuck catalog that his customers knew so well. He put merchandise on display, letting customers touch it and choose for themselves. He labeled it with prices. He offered discounts for purchases of 5 or 10. He got rid of credit. He got rid of sale prices, reducing all regular prices instead. And he started driving his truck around, selling fresh coffee and other sundries off the back to increase spot purchases and differentiate from the catalog. These were all of the trademarks of a discount, self-service grocery store.
But there were quick limits in the small town of Osceola. Monson began dreaming of how to apply the economies of scale that he studied in Chicago and probably to mimic Basket Stores. He thought of every wasteful spot in the producer-to-consumer grocery supply chain. He had a scheme that would take more than one store to be profitable. He could undercut all of his rivals, but it would take many, many stores — perhaps 100 — operating on the same efficient system.
Monson needed a fertile, unsaturated, perhaps over-ripe retail market. The West Coast was still a legendary land of opportunity. In 1915 he left with his brother Walter to tour the coast from Los Angeles north, looking for a prime spot. He found it in Seattle: no grocery chains, a market heavy with costly middlemen and naive retailers.
Art from Groceteria ad in December 15, 1916 Seattle Times
Groceteria grew quickly. Nine months after opening at 5th and Pine they opened store number nine in September 1916 on Broadway just south of East Thomas street. It was next to a drug store and across the street from two established grocers. Another nearby Groceteria opened on Renton Hill (now Pike/Pine) in 1917, and a third operated briefly in 1923 on 15th.
The chain faltered in 1919 after founder Alvin Monson returned from World War One with severe PTSD. He was unfit to run the business but his family continued trying to reintroduce him to his work, hoping familiar activities would help him recover. As Groceteria stalled a number of other discount, self-service chains entered the Seattle market from outside. First and chief among Groceteria’s rivals was the Washington franchise of Piggly Wiggly.
Groceteria closed all stores but the Pike Place Market shop in 1926. That store closed as well in 1928. The hole left by Groceteria was filled by a growing list of ever-larger chains. During the Great Depression these coalesced into Safeway and its local rival Tradewell.
The Wilshire or Lota Building: The 1916 Broadway Groceteria was at 233 Broadway East.
229-235 Broadway East is known today as the Lota Building, owned by long-time local attorney Lois Edwards.
It was built in 1903 by Washington State Senator W. W. Wilshire (William Wallace Eugene Wilshire). Back then the state legislative sessions were short and biannual, meaning Wilshire continued his career on the side. Coincidentally he was an attorney as well, partner in the law firm Wilshire & Kenaga with A. H. Kenaga.
1892 Wilshire home at 228 Harvard Ave East. At the time the cardinal was “North”. 1937 King County tax assessor photo courtesy Washington State Archives Puget Sound Regional Branch. Scanned by CHHS volunteer Gloria Fletcher.
Wilshire moved to Seattle from Washington, DC in the late 1880s with his wife Alice. Wilshire had worked as a land use attorney for the federal government. After renting on Denny Hill the Wilshires built just off Broadway at 228 Harvard Ave East in 1892, making them early streetcar commuters in the area. (The house was demolished for the 1964 apartment building Harvard House.)
He became King County Prosecutor while living at 228 Harvard Ave East. Among the many headlining trials he prosecuted, one stood out for his personal touch. The 1895 headline read, “Fists as Arguments — Come Into Play Between Enraged Attorneys”:
“If you say that I have done anything, you are a — liar.”
“‘You are a _____ ___ ____ ___.’ [said Wilshire]
“Quick as a flash, Winstock’s fist shot at Wilshire’s face, and Wilshire shot back his fist at Winstock. It was a regular stand-up fight… some were of the opinion that Winstock landed on Wilshire’s face, and others thought Wilshire parried and got in one on Winstock.”
In 1899 Wilshire was elected to the Washington State Senate for our district. He proceeded to build a new, larger home for himself and his wife Alice.
1900 Wilshire home seen in 1937 King County Assessor photo courtesy Washington State Archives Puget Sound Regional Branch. Scanned by CHHS volunteer Gloria Fletcher.
In 1900 they moved across the street at 302 Harvard Ave East. (This house was demolished for the mid-century apartment building that was recently demolished for Harvard Flats). Their home faced Harvard Place Park and an empty lot across Harvard. Wilshire was active in community issues and later led the Seattle Chamber of Commerce. Presumably Wilshire developed other buildings in the area but so far the two homes and the commercial building are the only ones known.
A: 228 Harvard Ave E; B: 302 Harvard Ave E; C: Wilshire Building, 229-235 Broadway E. Also note the buildings across and kitty corner from the Wilshire Building at Thomas and Broadway (clockwise): Rossman’s super service station (1937 photo); Dodds/Progress Grocery (1937 photo); and the Fleming & Moore Grocery. This aerial image is from the 1937 King County Aerial Survey, a pdf is available.
The Wilshire Building was completed in 1903, designed by architect Henry Dozier and constructed by E. D. Davis. The dossier on Dozier is surprisingly thin: the Pacific Coast Architecture Database only lists one building; and the tomb Shaping Seattle Architecture has only a few more and a typed out ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ for biographical information. Luckily a determined doctor in Denver has been researching Dozier for the last twenty years, and has a 96-page article with built works profiles and biographical information online.
Photo of Wilshire Building from King County Assessor records for parcel 600350-1191 courtesy Washington State Archives Puget Sound Regional Branch. Scanned by CHHS volunteer Gloria Fletcher.
December 2017 photo of Lota Building, originally known as the Wilshire Building. Rob Ketcherside.
Other Wilshire Building tenants: Initial tenants included a maternity home upstairs which women rented by they week as they prepared to give birth. By 1914, and throughout the time of Groceteria in the 231 storefront, the Rex Sanatorium occupied the upstairs rooms. Per advertisements it was “a modern sanatorium, complete in every detail”. Rex expanded on the maternity home’s services, offering “convalescent, surgical and maternity” care. Rex later moved to the other side of Cal Anderson Park, so by the 1937 photo it was replaced by Hume’s Sanatarium. Leanna M. Hume had been matron of the Rex Sanatorium.
The corner store at 235 Broadway East was occupied by the pharmacy of M. P. Leary. Leary’s shop remained from 1903 for about a decade. Leary was replaced by the second Swift’s Pharmacies store, which remained past Groceteria’s tenancy next door. Swift was replaced briefly by a store for the Jamieson Drugs chain from about 1931-1933, and that was replaced by the Dempsey’s Pharmacy that appears in the 1937 photo.
The southern storefronts held a number of tenants. Prior to Groceteria moving into 233 Broadway East, there was the store of P. MacPherson who sold fabric and clothing.
Broadway Groceteria and competition: Groceteria’s Broadway location competed directly with two other grocers at the intersection with Thomas Street. Across Broadway was Fleming & Moore, which had 4 stores all on Capitol Hill and had operated as a “cash grocery” since opening in 1911. Read more about Fleming & Moore in CHHS president Tom Heuser’s article.
Diagonally across the intersection was the Dodds family grocery which had been operating within a couple blocks since 1903. I wrote a bit about Dodds while chronicling the history of the Julia’s building. In it I conjectured that as the siblings left for separate careers and lives the grocery simply came to an end. Now I wonder whether the competition with Groceteria instead led to their end. After Dodds closed in 1919 they were replaced by grocer couple Heijiro and Ishi Hashiguchi who branded their grocery with the auspicious title Broadway Sanitary Public Market.
A helpful Groceteria ad tells us that C. V. Evans was manager of the Groceteria in 1922. He lived at 1723 Bellevue that year. He had recently relocated to Seattle from Denver where he was already working in the grocery business. In Seattle he worked at grocer V. L. Wilson at 19th and 45th prior to joining Groceteria and lived with his wife Ethel at 4516 Burke Ave. In 1924 he worked at two Groceterias, selling fruit at the north Fremont store and meat at the Eastlake store.
Groceteria left the Wilshire / Lota Building in late 1922, moving across the street to 212 Broadway East, south of Fleming & Moore. Seattle’s new Piggly Wiggly franchise opened their fourth store at Broadway and Roy in August 1922, and in early 1923 opened another directly across the street from Groceteria next to their old storefront, 231 Broadway East, in the Wilshire Building.
Stores for Renton Hill and Capitol Hill: Two other Grocetera stores served the area.
Groceteria #15 was at 1320 East Pike and opened on February 1, 1917 — the 15th store in 15 months. It was called the Renton Hill store, referring to the neighborhood name that was still in use for the area now around Trader Joe’s.
By 1920 the store was managed by Henry J. Marquardt, who ran it until closure in 1926. Marquardt was from Omaha, Nebraska, where his father Henry P. Marquardt ran a grocery store. Henry J. served in WW1 in the Army Corps of Engineers 105th regiment. While he was in France his parents relocated to Seattle. Henry J followed in his father’s footsteps first as a butcher and then as manager of the Renton Hill Groceteria store.
December 2017 photo of the circa 1906 mixed-use building that had Groceteria #15 from 1917 to 1926.
Like the Broadway store, a Piggly Wiggly opened nearby to directly compete with it. It was right next door at the northwest corner of 14th and Pike. Piggly Wiggly was in a retail space below multiple residential units.
Along with the Broadway store this location continued until mid-1926 when the chain went bankrupt.
Circa 1926 grocery building which housed Piggly Wiggly after construction. 1326 East Pike St. Parcel 600300-0295. Courtesy Washington State Archives Puget Sound Regional Branch. Scanned by Brendan McKeon for a Seattle Architecture Foundation project.
Note that the building currently at the northwest corner was constructed in about 1926. The “P” emblem on decorative elements probably means the building was constructed for Piggly Wiggly. It was succeeded by Piggly Wiggly-MacMarr and then Safeway after corporate mergers. Safeway can be seen in the 1937 property assessor photo.
The final location, Groceteria #39, was the only one known as “Capitol Hill” and it was also the shortest lived. It only appeared in ads for a few months in late 1923. It was at 430 15th Ave E.
Exit Groceteria: After introducing Seattle to self-service, discount groceries in a chain format, Groceteria lasted just more than a decade. Alvin Monson never recovered from his PTSD, finally winning disability pay from the VA during the Great Depression. He only lived for a few more years afterward, on a farm in rural Edmonds. Because the family refused offers to buy the chain there is no direct corporate descendant. But Safeway acquired chains that fought with Groceteria and filled its vacuum. Tradewell, a Seattle-based chain that lasted from the 1930s to the 1980s, was built from chains that also thrived in the late 1920s. Groceteria, though, was slowly forgotten.
This article was written on behalf of the Capitol Hill Historical Society. The next meeting of the society is on February 25, 2018.
Fascinating history as usual, Robert….thanks so much!
I can’t help but compare the much-earlier way to shop, with customers ordering at a counter and chatting with the clerks as their order was prepared, with today’s mode of self-shop and now self-checkout (prime example: Broadway QFC), without having to interact with a single human being. Something has been lost.
On a related note: Growing up in Montlake, I remember that every week our block would be visited by a mobile green-grocer….his truck would open up on each side, revealing a wide variety of fresh produce. It would park on the block for awhile as the local housewives (very few working moms in the 1950s) shopped and visited with their friends on the street. Does anyone else remember this?
One thing that has been lost, such as with self checkout, is jobs.
We asked the cashiers at our local Safeway how they felt about it when the self checks were put in – they said it added several people to each shift…. I don’t know if it’s stayed that way, but initially, and according to the workers themselves, it actually did not mean lost jobs.
Bob, thank you for the kind comments!
I found this topic incredibly interesting to research. Although I’ve lived through the onset of Internet shopping, it was still startling to realize that there was a time when “cutting out the middle man” and simple self-service were shocking to people.
Also if anyone has more to share about the green grocer truck I’d love to hear it~
Things change and then change again. I’d be mortified to look a grocer in the eye once or twice a week and hand over my grocery list. “Yes, I really do eat that much fresh mozzarella, Buster.”
However, I have no problem putting the same list into Amazon Fresh, and that seems to be the future of a lot of (but not all) grocery activity.
This article has a very wide geographical and temporal scope. Sad to hear about the terrible effect of WWI on Mr. Monson, and I never knew there were Piggly Wiggly stores in the Seattle area.
Thank you Uncle Vinny!
You can read about Piggly Wiggly in my article about their Roy and Broadway store, http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2015/05/chs-re-take-piggly-wiggly-on-broadway/
Sorry I didn’t include the link in the article.
Does anyone have any pictures of the old Red Apple that was Pine/14th?
I know I’m coming rather late to the conversation, but I have several photos from the late 1920’s/early 1930’s of the inside of the Grenada Grocery located on 600 E Howell. I believe the photos are taken at different times as it appears the grocery underwent some remodel. My Great Uncle Leo Beckham worked there for a number of years until he committed suicide in he mid 1930’s. I believe they were taken for advertising purposes. It’s interesting to really examine the photos for the variety of items an old, neighborhood grocery store used to contain. I wish I could include them – but there’s no share photo button!
Alicia, if you emailed them to me at [email protected] , I’d be thrilled to work with other Capitol Hill Historical Society members and put together a history of Grenada Grocery!
Rob