1946 vintage supermarket planning manual w/ subject index. Very Good. Unmarked. Stated First Edition, no later printings indicated. 1946. The Progressive Grocer; The Butterick Company, New York. Hardcover: red cloth w/ yellow stamped title lettering, light edge rubbing, minor corner tip bumping, small spot of surface rubbing & color loss to the rear cover center, light shelf wear, minor softening & light rubbing to spine head & heel. Binding tight, solid & square. Extensively illustrated w/ b&w photographs of 1940s supermarket interiors, dimensioned architectural fixture drawings & retail floor plan schematics. 299 pp. 7.25x10" (Quarto). Ships in a box, quickly & w/care.
SYNOPSIS:Self-Service Food Stores is the 1946 trade manual that guided American grocers through the shift from clerk-assisted counter service to open-floor self-service retailing. Carl W. Dipman, longtime editor of The Progressive Grocer, wrote it w/ retail analysts Robert W. Mueller and Ralph E. Head for independent grocers and regional chains rebuilding their stores in the post-war expansion. Chapters work through customer traffic patterns, checkout island placement, department square footage, inventory turnover and commercial lighting.
The text is extensively illustrated w/ dimensioned fixture schematics, store floor plans and black and white photographic plates of mid-century markets, among them Grand Union, Piggly Wiggly and Stop & Shop. Technical diagrams cover tiered bakery racks, open refrigerated dairy housings, produce misting racks and the prepackaging stations that replaced counter slicing and weighing in butcher and dairy departments. Sections on customer cart circulation, refrigerated meat display counters and promotional display mechanics carry the same dimensioned treatment.
Published in New York by The Progressive Grocer division of The Butterick Company, the volume records the moment grocery retailing became an engineered industry. Carl W. Dipman edited The Progressive Grocer for decades and wrote earlier trade volumes including The Modern Grocery Store of 1931, while Robert W. Mueller and Ralph E. Head tracked post-war consumer habits and supermarket economics. Business historians, architectural collections and scholars of mid-century commercial design treat it as a primary source for store layout, package design and retail ergonomics of the 1940s.
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