These Vintage Photos of Grocery Stores Through the Years Are a Total Blast From the Past

A lot has changed through human history, but one constant is that we have always needed food—and thought of many ways to trade for it. An open-air market in ancient times wasn't all that different from a farmer's market, besides the apparent wardrobe and hygiene changes. If you wonder how much things have changed and stayed the same, here's what grocery stores have looked like over the years, from old-timey general stores to shiny modern supermarkets.

1) General Store in Minnesota, 1867

Before there was the Mall of America in Minnesota, residents were served by smaller general stores for their needs. Clearly, one of these shoppers either lives far away or is getting a big grocery haul since there's a horse and buggy parked in front.

2) Wicker & Krebs Dry Goods

In another 19th-century Minnesota spot, a few men are lounging outside. The term "Dry Goods" in U.S. stores referred to textiles, toiletries, and staples like flour, sugar, tobacco, and coffee that could be stored dry.

4) Parisian Grocery Store During Franco-Prussian War

The long queue outside this grocery store in Paris may have been a side effect of slower service due to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

5) Gwalia Supply Store Display

The Museum of Welsh Life has a display of the old Gwalia Supply store, which was a family business founded in Ogmore Vale, Glamorgan in 1880.

6) Gwalia Supply Interior

Here's a peek at what the inside of the store looked like. It was founded by William Llewellyn and expanded to have a grocery, bakery, ironmonger, pharmacy, and more. It became so popular that "Gwalia Store" is now a somewhat common term in Wales with imitators unconnected to the original still around today.

7) San Francisco's Chinatown, 1885

This store has both meat and produce set up in an enticing display in a shopping area of the Chinatown neighborhood in San Francisco.

8) Parisian General Store

Here's a general store taking up a whole block in Paris with some extravagant window displays clearly meant to capture the attention of passersby in buggies or walking by.

9) Chinese Merchants in King's Bazaar, Burma

These vendors are working in a stall in King's Bazaar in the city of Mandalay, Burma. It must have been a crowded and hot workday since both people posing have fans at the ready.

10) Best of Both Worlds, Grocery Store & Bar

Here's a shot of a bunch of locals posing in front of their town's grocery store. There's even an attached bar room on the right if you want to take the edge off before haggling.

11) Grocery Store & Customers, Egypt

This circa-1888 shot in the Egyptian capital city of Cairo shows customers and vendors outside a grocery store. It seems a textile merchant is set up next door given the huge stack of rugs.

12) The Roell Bros Store, 1890

The Roell Bros. store in the U.S. clearly had a hefty budget when this photo was taken, given the massive display of whole chickens on the right. The fruits and veggies on the left look super fresh even in black-and-white.

13) R.H. Cleaves Grocery & Bakery

On the much smaller side of things, here's a tiny grocery store and bakery operating somewhere remote in America. The guys in buggies could be customers or maybe even workers getting ready for deliveries.

14) Antique General Store Toy, 1890s

Kids in the 19th century liked playing pretend just as much as now. Here's a cool toy set featuring a general store along with figurines of the clerk and customers.

15) Klondike Trading Co., Alaska

Sometimes a tent will have to do the trick! During the Klondike Gold Rush between 1896 and 1899, some 100,000 prospectors traveled to the Klondike Region in northwestern Canada. Alaska was a pit stop for many of these traveling prospectors, so this trading tent probably helped them get new supplies for their long journeys.

16) Men in Doorway of Dresbach & Hollinger Store

General stores seemed to be a great place for locals to meet up and hang out after work, or maybe even during work if you worked at the store.

17) Shopworker & Bananas in Grocery Store

Here's a photo of a young shop assistant adjusting a huge hanging display of bananas. There seems to be a sense of pride in his expression—maybe he just went through a tough process of hanging them up.

18) Fourth of July Parade Store Float, 1897

This horse-drawn store float dedicated to the superiority of Empress Flour was part of a 4th of July Parade in Kansas in 1897. We wonder if there were any baking bandits in the parade audience—this setup seems quite easily robbed!

19) Family General Store, Oklahoma

Here's another small, family-run business serving the farming communities of Oklahoma in the late 1800s.

20) Worker's Well-Deserved Break

A worker lounges while others pose in the back. Note the impressive can stacking in this shot.

21) Félix Potin, Trailblazing Chain Store

One of the earliest examples of the chain grocery store was Félix Potin, named after the French businessman who founded it. He created his first shop in Paris in 1844 and established a factory and home delivery service for it before his death in 1872. The brand expanded massively under his successors and had 70 branches at the height of its success before collapsing in the 1950s.

22) Bertha Russo's Vienna Grocery Store

This photo, which was apparently taken around the turn of the 20th century, shows two Austrian women outside a store in Vienna. One of these women was likely the store's owner, Bertha Russo.

23) Russian Grocery Store, 1901

Here's an interior shot of a food market in Russia, with employees wearing white aprons and some customers gathered by a register at the back.

24) Grocery Store & Grocers, Early 1900s

Another U.S. grocery store in an unspecified town, this one featuring crisp white uniforms for its employees.

25) Piggly Wiggly, First Self-Service Store

The first Piggly Wiggly was opened in 1916 and is credited as introducing self-service to grocery stores. This isn't self-service checkout like you may think—it's referring to the fact that stores used to have most items behind the counter and clerks would fetch them for you. (In the modern age of grocery shopping apps that offer delivery and curbside pickup, we've practically come full circle.)

26) Venezuelan Grocery Store, Date Unspecified

Here's a shot from a charming counter-service store in Maracaibo, Venezuela, potentially from the early 20th century.

27) Piggly Wiggly Registers, 1918

When you're milling around the aisles of the grocery store with a packed cart forgetting where they keep your favorite coffee beans, you can thank Piggly Wiggly founder Clarence Saunders for that.

28) C.J. Fite Store, Alabama

This store, which sold everything from seeds to oats to Coca-Cola, was photographed by noted photojournalist Walker Evans in the 1930s while much of the world was suffering in the Great Depression. This photo has been shown in an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

29) Southern Roadside Store, 1936

Another Walker Evans photo shows a food stand on the side of the road between Tuscaloosa and Greensboro, Alabama. Evans once said that he aspired for his photos to always be "literate, authoritative, transcendent."

30) Chicago Market Illustration by Franklin McMahon

Franklin McMahon was an illustrator and journalist known for his artistic renderings of important moments in the civil rights movement like the Emmett Till trial.

Here, he captured a bustling supermarket in his hometown of Chicago. The muted but warm colors drive home a sense of community and comfort.

31) Flooded Grocery Store

Here's a mind-blowing shot of a 20th-century grocery store in Washington State halfway underwater following a flood. Guess you'll have to get your cereal, elsewhere.

32) Woman Buying Groceries, Mid-1900s

The economic boom that followed WWII ushered in a new generation of grocery stores with wider options across the U.S., though these usually catered to white neighborhoods. Historically, areas occupied by minorities are more likely to be "food deserts" that have less access to big grocery chains even today.

33) Grocery Store Owned by Mr. J. Benjamin, 1942

This photo, captured on a Saturday afternoon in a D.C. grocery store by the photographer and filmmaker Gordon Parks, is preserved in the Library of Congress for its historical significance.

Parks had an eclectic career as a documentary photographer, glamour photographer, and, later, film director for films like Shaft.

34) Upstate Darlings, Grand Union Chain Store

Grand Union is a supermarket chain local to New York and Vermont. Founded in 1916, the stores are still around today.

35) French Supermarket, 1960

Here's a customer checking out of a French supermarket—or supermarché, as they would put it.

36) Cans Tumbling for Jack Benny Program Shoot

Don't worry, this wasn't a real accident. It was all part of a shoot for the episode "Jack Shops at the Supermarket" on Jack Benny's eponymous CBS comedy show.

37) Cart Racing at Denver Safeway, 1970

This shot, which looks suspiciously like a grocery cart race caught on film, ran in the Denver Post in 1970. Safeway, founded in 1915, has over 900 locations today.

38) Tesco Baby Backpacks, 1970s

This goofy shot is from a promotion that the UK supermarket chain Tesco ran where mothers could pick up these backpack cradles. It seems convenient but apparently led to shenanigans like this slap.

39) Elvis Costello in a Liverpool Grocery, 1979

Here's a great shot of the singer Elvis Costello with his backing band The Attractions in a bright and colorful food shop in Liverpool, England.

40) Fauchon, Fancy French Eats in Paris, 1980

This photo reveals the rich, wood-paneled interiors of Fauchon, an upmarket Parisian store that catered to the richest shoppers in the city.

41) Saudi Arabian Market Parking Lot, 1980

Here, a worker assists a customer in loading his car outside a supermarket in Saudi Arabia.

42) Natraj's Grocery Store, Toronto

This shot from the '80s shows owner Hasmuk Dharmaj serving a customer at his store Natraj's Grocery Store. This ran in the Toronto Star.

43) Lost Chinatown - Singapore's Sago Street Market

This July 1983 photo captures one of the last months that Singapore's Chinatown existed in this form. Thousands of residents lived and worked around the Sago Street market, and they were relocated to make room for an industrialized urban market dubbed the Chinatown Complex which opened in 1984.

44) Big Dairy Aisle, Long Island

This photo from 1985 was captured at the Northeastern grocery store chain Key Food.

45) Protestors Outside Bigg's Market, Denver

Bigg's was a Colorado store that tried out the "hypermarket" model you now see in Walmart stores. It's unclear exactly why these people are protesting outside Bigg's in this 1989 shot, but some signs say "Local 7" which indicates it may be a labor union protest.

46) Kuwait Grocery Store, 1990s

Here's an owner measuring some products in his small grocery shop in Kuwait. All the candies on display under him look very appealing for sure.