3 things you don’t know about Woodman’s, Wisconsin’s favorite grocery chain

105 years ago, John Woodman opened a produce stand on the corner of Milton and Sherman Avenues in Janesville, Wisconsin, and the world has never been the same.

We’re kidding, of course: Woodman’s rise to becoming a $2 billion grocery brand wasn’t that simple!

Here are three things you probably don’t know about the company to celebrate its 105th birthday:

🛒 When built, Woodman’s Kenosha store was the largest grocery store in America.

Actually, the 252,000 sq. ft. location, which opened in 1997, was billed as “the largest grocery store in the Universe” at nearly three times the size of the company’s first “superstore” in Madison, which was a mere 90,000 sq. ft.

⏰ BONUS FACT: Set a stopwatch, and see how long it takes you to walk from one side of the Kenosha store to the other. It took us 2 minutes and 49 seconds (no running allowed!)

🛒 Woodman’s was the first grocery store in Wisconsin to use UPC technology. 

UPC (Universal Product Code) is the standardized barcode system (that rectangle patch of vertical black bars) used to identify and track products in stores and warehouses. Woodman’s became the first Badger State store to use it in 1975.

🛒 Today, Woodman’s is one of Wisconsin’s first grocers to use robots.

In 2018, the company started testing multipurpose robots that could detect out-of-stock items with more than 95% accuracy and incorrect/mispriced products with more than 90% accuracy. During COVID, the company rolled the robots out in 18 of its Wisconsin and Illinois stores.

🧀 BONUS FACT: The average Woodman’s store has 24 aisles that are 96 feet long and carries 100,000 different products.

MORE: No, 14 Commercial Freezers of Just Pizza is Not ‘Normal.’ After Video of Woodman’s Endless Aisles Goes Viral– We Reassess Wisconsin’s Wacky Grocery Habits