Publix founder George Jenkins opened his first “food palace” Publix in 1940. At the time, the only opportunity to weigh yourself was at the doctor, or maybe by finding a coin-operated scale. Jenkins offered it as a free service to generate traffic in his store and it stuck.
The model No. 2830 people weigher found in a new Publix today is identical to the ones the old Toledo Scale company started manufacturing in Ohio around 1950. Mettler Toledo, a Fortune 500 company headquartered in Switzerland, made the industrial equipment, precision lab instruments and high-tech scale components. But for decades, they kept manufacturing the low-tech, but reliable, people weighers for Publix, essentially the only company that wanted them.
When Mettler Toledo ended production of the 2830s for good in 2015, Publix started stockpiling a significant number of them in a Florida warehouse. The grocery chain also has its own workshop for refurbishing old, used 2830s to look new. Publix will not have scales in any new location it opens in the future
No need – with AI and facial recognition, they’ll know your weight when you walk in the door.