For generations of Americans, the local Ben Franklin store was the kind of place where you could walk in looking for a spool of thread and leave with a toy, a bag of candy, a birthday card, a kitchen gadget, and a handful of things you never knew you needed. With stores scattered across small towns and neighborhood shopping districts throughout the country, Ben Franklin became one of the most familiar names of the five-and-dime era.
The chain traced its roots to the Butler Brothers, a Chicago-based wholesale company that began supplying independent merchants during the late 19th century. In 1927, the company developed the Ben Franklin retail name for its network of variety stores, borrowing the identity of Benjamin Franklin and his reputation for thrift and practicality. Unlike many conventional chains, however, Ben Franklin stores were generally operated by independent owners who obtained merchandise and other support through the larger organization. This franchise-like arrangement helped the name spread into communities that were too small to attract some of the country’s major department stores.
A typical Ben Franklin was packed with inexpensive everyday merchandise. Customers might find sewing notions, fabric, housewares, school supplies, stationery, greeting cards, toys, candy, cosmetics, hardware, seasonal decorations, artificial flowers, hobby supplies, and countless other odds and ends beneath the same roof. Prices were no longer literally limited to five or ten cents as the decades passed, but the old “5-10” lettering remained a familiar sight on many storefronts.
Ben Franklin stores were particularly important in smaller communities. Before shopping malls, big-box retailers and online shopping, the local variety store often served as a miniature department store. Children could inspect the toy aisle while their parents bought household necessities, and the stores became especially busy around Christmas, Halloween and the beginning of the school year. Since many locations were locally owned, individual Ben Franklin stores often developed personalities of their own and carried merchandise tailored to their communities.
The company also has an unusual connection to one of the biggest names in American retail history. In 1945, Sam Walton purchased a Ben Franklin variety store in Newport, Arkansas, operating it as a Ben Franklin franchise before later running another variety store in Bentonville. Walton’s experiences in the variety-store business helped shape the ideas about pricing, merchandising, and retail operations that eventually led him to open the first Walmart in 1962.
By the latter decades of the 20th century, the traditional five-and-dime business was increasingly squeezed by discount department stores, shopping centers, and eventually large national chains. Ben Franklin experimented with larger formats and craft-oriented stores, but the enormous nationwide network associated with its heyday gradually disappeared. The corporate organization behind the chain went through bankruptcy in the 1990s, although independently operated stores carrying the Ben Franklin name continued afterward, and a small number have survived into the modern era.
For people who grew up with them, however, Ben Franklin stores represent something larger than another vanished retail chain. Along with Woolworth, Kresge, and other classic variety stores, Ben Franklin belonged to an era when downtown shopping meant walking from storefront to storefront and the neighborhood five-and-dime seemed to stock almost everything imaginable. Its crowded aisles, hand-lettered sale signs, candy counters, and seemingly endless assortment of inexpensive merchandise made Ben Franklin a fixture of American Main Streets for much of the 20th century.
