Grocery Store Trivia
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69 free Grocery Store trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
46 free grocery store trivia questions with answers. Everyone shops in one, almost nobody knows their history. This grocery store trivia quiz covers how the supermarket was invented and who runs the ones you shop in now: Clarence Saunders and the first self-service Piggly Wiggly in 1916, King Kullen's garage in Queens, Sylvan Goldman's folding shopping cart, the pack of Juicy Fruit that was the first item ever scanned with a barcode, and the first self-checkout machine. The brand rounds cover Kroger, Walmart, A&P, Safeway, Publix, H-E-B, Wegmans, Meijer, Whole Foods and Amazon, Costco and Price Club, Aldi and its two halves, Trader Joe's and Two Buck Chuck, and the British and French giants Tesco, Sainsbury's and Carrefour. Easy questions up front for a family or office quiz night, with tougher ones on founders, dates and odd naming stories further in. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the chains, the inventions and the people, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 69 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which chain, opened in Memphis in 1916, is credited as the first true self-service grocery store?
Piggly Wiggly
Piggly Wiggly customers entered through a turnstile and walked four aisles past 605 packaged items, paying at the exit; founder Clarence Saunders patented the self-service layout in 1917.
Q 02The first true supermarket, King Kullen, opened in 1930 inside what kind of building in Queens?
A former garage
A former garage at 171-06 Jamaica Avenue held the 6,000-square-foot store that Michael J. Cullen opened on 4 August 1930; the Smithsonian recognises it as the first supermarket.
Q 03Who introduced one of the first shopping carts in 1937, in his Humpty Dumpty stores in Oklahoma?
Sylvan Goldman
Sylvan Goldman, owner of the Humpty Dumpty chain in Oklahoma City, introduced his wheeled basket carrier on 4 June 1937; the invention eventually made him a multimillionaire.
Q 04What everyday object inspired the design of the first shopping cart?
A folding chair
A folding chair gave Goldman the template: he pictured a basket on the seat and wheels on the legs, and with mechanic Fred Young built a carrier that stacked flat when not in use.
Q 05What was the first product ever scanned with a UPC barcode at a checkout, in 1974?
A pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum
A pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit gum rang up at 8:01 a.m. on 26 June 1974 at a Marsh supermarket in Ohio, for 67 cents, the first purchase scanned with a Universal Product Code.
Q 06In which Ohio town did that first barcode scan take place?
Troy
Troy, about 20 miles north of Dayton, had the Marsh supermarket chosen for the trial; Marsh was an Indiana chain founded by Ermal Marsh in Muncie in 1931.
Q 07In which chain was the first self-checkout machine installed, near Atlanta in 1986?
Kroger
Kroger stores around Atlanta trialled CheckRobot's machines in 1986; the system, built by David Humble's firm in Deerfield Beach, Florida, had shoppers scan items and then pay a central cashier.
Q 08In which city did Bernard, aged 23, open his first grocery in 1883, founding the chain that bears his name?
Cincinnati
Cincinnati: Bernard opened his Great Western Tea Company store there in 1883 with his life savings, and in 1901 his chain became the first grocer to run its own bakery.
Q 09In which Arkansas town did Sam and Bud Walton open the first Walmart in 1962?
Rogers
Rogers, Arkansas saw the first Wal-Mart Discount City open on 2 July 1962; Sam had run a Walton's Five and Dime in nearby Bentonville, which became the company's headquarters.
Q 10Sam Walton's first store, in Newport, Arkansas in 1945, was a franchise of which chain?
Ben Franklin
Ben Franklin, the Butler Brothers variety-store franchise, was Sam Walton's first shop, opened in Newport, Arkansas in 1945; he lost the lease in 1950 and moved to Bentonville.
Q 11Which chain was the largest grocery retailer in the United States from 1915 all the way to 1975?
A&P
A&P, the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, had more than 15,000 stores by 1930 and finally closed for good in 2015.
Q 12What did A&P originally sell when it started in New York in 1859?
Tea and coffee
Tea and coffee were the stock of George Gilman's Great American Tea Company from 1859; the Great Atlantic & Pacific name followed in 1869, the year the transcontinental railroad was completed.
Q 13Why was the name Safeway chosen in 1926?
The stores were cash-only and gave no credit
Q 21In which city did Costco open its first warehouse in 1983?
Seattle
Seattle's first Costco opened on 15 September 1983 on 4th Avenue South, founded by retail veteran Jim Sinegal and lawyer Jeffrey Brotman.
Q 22Costco's Kirkland Signature house brand is named after what?
The Washington suburb where it was once headquartered
The Washington suburb where it was once headquartered: Costco moved its head office to Kirkland in 1987, launched the Kirkland Signature label while based there, and relocated to Issaquah in 1996.
Q 23Which San Diego warehouse retailer, opened in 1976 in old Howard Hughes hangars, later merged with Costco?
Price Club
The stores were cash-only and gave no credit, so the 1926 name pitched shopping 'the safe way' that kept customers out of debt; Marion Skaggs had run his earlier Idaho stores on the same cash-and-carry basis.
Q 14Which Florida chain, founded in 1930, is wholly owned by its present and past employees?
Publix
Publix opened its first store in Winter Haven, Florida in 1930 under George Jenkins; his 1940 Winter Haven 'food palace' boasted air conditioning, fluorescent lighting and electric-eye doors.
Q 15Where did the founder of Florida's employee-owned chain take its name from?
A struggling movie theatre company
A struggling movie theatre company supplied the name: George Jenkins simply liked the sound of it when he opened his first store in Winter Haven in 1930.
Q 16The Texas chain H-E-B was founded in 1905 by Florence Butt in which town?
Kerrville
Kerrville, in the Texas Hill Country, was where Florence Butt opened her grocery in 1905 with $60, on the ground floor of the family's rented home.
Q 17Which New York chain made every Fortune Best Companies to Work For list from 1998 to 2024?
Wegmans
Wegmans began in 1916 when brothers John and Walter Wegman opened the Rochester Fruit and Vegetable Company, selling from a pushcart; the family chain is based in Rochester.
Q 18What was Hendrik Meijer's trade before opening a grocery in Greenville, Michigan, in 1934?
Barber
Barber: Hendrik Meijer ran a barbershop in Greenville, Michigan and in 1934 filled an empty storefront he owned with groceries; his 14-year-old son Fred helped and later ran the company.
Q 19Which company bought Whole Foods Market for $13.7 billion in 2017?
Amazon
Amazon closed the $13.7 billion deal in August 2017 and cut prices on staples at Whole Foods the day it took over; Whole Foods Market itself had started in Austin in 1980.
Q 20What was the name of the Austin store that John Mackey opened in 1978 before Whole Foods, spoofing a rival?
SaferWay
SaferWay, a dig at Safeway, was the vegetarian store John Mackey and Renee Lawson opened in 1978 with $45,000 borrowed from family and friends; the pair lived above the shop.
Price Club, Sol Price's members-only warehouse, opened in 1976 on Morena Boulevard in hangars once used by Howard Hughes; after rebuffing Sam's Club it merged with Costco in 1993 as PriceCostco.
Q 24The name Aldi is a shortening of what?
Albrecht Diskont
Albrecht Diskont was compressed to Aldi in 1962; brothers Karl and Theo Albrecht had taken over their mother's corner shop in Essen in 1946 and built a chain of discount stores.
Q 25The Albrecht brothers' company split in two in 1960. What are the two halves called?
Aldi Nord and Aldi Süd
They divide the world between them, except the US, where Aldi Süd runs Aldi and Aldi Nord owns Trader Joe's.
Q 26Which US chain did Theo Albrecht of Aldi Nord buy in 1979?
Trader Joe's
Trader Joe's was sold by founder Joe Coulombe to Theo Albrecht in 1979; Coulombe stayed on as chief executive until 1988.
Q 27In which US state did Aldi Süd open its first American store in 1976?
Iowa
Iowa City got Aldi's first American store in 1976, a foothold that grew past 2,000 US stores by 2020; in 2024 Aldi took over about 400 Winn-Dixie and Harveys stores in the Southeast.
Q 28In which California city did Joe Coulombe open his first South Seas-themed store in 1967?
Pasadena
Pasadena's Arroyo Parkway store opened in August 1967 with Hawaiian shirts and a nautical theme; the company later settled its headquarters in Monrovia.
Q 29What convenience-store chain did Joe Coulombe run before his rebrand, worried it looked too much like 7-Eleven?
Pronto Market
Pronto Market stores, a small Los Angeles convenience chain Coulombe had run since 1958, looked doomed when 7-Eleven arrived, so he dreamed up the South Seas theme on a Caribbean holiday, riffing on Trader Vic's.
Q 30What is the popular nickname of Charles Shaw wine, sold only at Joe Coulombe's chain?
Two Buck Chuck
Two Buck Chuck took its name from the $1.99 price at which the chain launched Charles Shaw wine in California in 2002; Fred Franzia's Bronco Wine Company made it from surplus California grapes.