Home
Weekly Ads
| Take a tour of Publix's history by clicking Next or any of the numbers on the bar above the picture. |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
||||||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
| In 1940, George Jenkins mortgaged an orange grove he had acquired during the Depression
for a down payment on his dream store - Florida's first supermarket. He built his "food palace" of marble, glass
and stucco, and equipped it with innovations never seen before in a grocery store. Air conditioning. Fluorescent
lighting. Electric-eye doors. Frozen food cases. Piped-in music. Eight-foot-wide aisles. Open dairy cases designed
to Mr. George's specifications. In-store donut and flower shops. People traveled from miles to shop there, and
Publix prospered.
But again, larger forces restricted his plans: the country was at war. In 1945, with construction expansion constrained by wartime shortages, Publix purchased a chain of 19 small All American grocery stores. |