“The first Swiss supermarket”

Migros opened its first-ever «Super Market» in Basel’s Eisengasse in 1952. Hundreds of people flocked to the new shopping paradise on its opening day. The «Super Market» stocked groceries on the ground floor and other consumer items on the first floor.

The Securitas employees are pushed to the limit with their responsibility for ensuring that the people can enter and leave the shop safely. Twelve thousand people attend the opening of the first Swiss supermarket at Eisengasse in Basel. “One doesn't take offence when the Basel inhabitants take pleasure in the fact that, for once, they win by a nose ahead of Zurich,” reports the Brückenbauer in May 1952. “The first supermarket is in Basel and not Zurich...”
The foodstuffs are on the ground floor of the new premises: “The long, open refrigerated display units present tempting chicken, ice cream, etc. A special attraction is the appetising sausage and meat goods department in the background and the wonderfully fragrant bakery in the front section of the store.”
The customers move to the upper floor up a “gently curving staircase”. On the first floor are the commodities: “From the baby clothes to the nylon stockings, from the wooden spoons to the modern salad servers, from the toothpaste to the eau-de-Cologne, everything is clearly and easily displayed.” This is more of interest to the women; the invited gentlemen of the press are, much more interested in the “ingenious ‹bottle and cardboard returns system›, which leads the items directly from each checkout on the ground floor to the cellar via a conveyor belt”.
To celebrate the occasion, small customer gifts are handed out: A “bouquet of May flowers for the ladies”, a “practical pocket manicure set for the gentlemen” and a “bright balloon for the little ones”. Full of enthusiasm, the Wir Brückenbauer journalist wishes: “May the Basel Migros supermarket bloom and flourish!”