A South Carolina Piggly Wiggly that served downtown Myrtle Beach for 54 years announced October 11 as its final day. Its departure comes as grocery retailers are reassessing individual locations, but this store’s story reaches back to a family business that opened in 1972.
The store at 1700 North Kings Highway began when brothers Lester and Clarence Cannon opened it near Myrtle Beach’s oceanfront. For decades it served both residents and vacationers, including visitors who returned to the same stretch of the beach each summer.
A familiar downtown stop for generations
According to reporting by The Sun News, carried by AOL, the Cannon family operated the location until 2020, when the business changed hands. Current owner Jay Martin described increasingly difficult economic conditions as a reason he could no longer keep it operating.
The original family also remembered how closely the store was connected to its customers. Lester Cannon’s daughter, Leisa Cannon Griggs, recalled growing up around the grocery store, including the familiar routines of checking produce and recognizing returning visitors.
That long history matters in a tourist city where a centrally located supermarket can be useful in different ways to different customers. Full-time residents may have shopped there for household staples, while tourists staying near the beach could reach it without a long drive.
The store developed a distinctive identity through Piggly Wiggly merchandise as well as groceries. The Sun News reported that a batch of 200 branded T-shirts once sold out in roughly a week and a half, demonstrating customers’ enthusiasm for the familiar pig logo.
Why the owners decided to close
Martin told the local newspaper that the economic climate had made recent years challenging. The original owners had also experienced increasing competition from other grocers before selling the business in 2020. Those accounts provide context, rather than proving that a single expense or competitor forced the October closure.
A separate September announcement thanked employees, local families and longtime customers. That farewell confirmed the closing date but did not provide a detailed financial breakdown or a verified number of employees losing their jobs.
It is also important to distinguish this Myrtle Beach closure from the entire Piggly Wiggly brand disappearing. Other South Carolina stores continue to operate. Reporting before the closing identified the Surfside Beach store at 122 U.S. 17 Business as another Grand Strand location.
The announced last day has now passed, but the reporting checked here did not provide a separate post-closing inspection or replacement-tenant announcement. Any claim about the building’s next use would be premature.
For downtown Myrtle Beach, the planned farewell ends an unusually long run for one neighborhood grocery store and a recognizable landmark for generations of shoppers.
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