Welcome Wagon was founded in 1928 in Memphis, Tennessee, by an advertising man, Thomas Winston Briggs. A hostess called on families who had just moved to town, bearing a gift basket filled with coupons and promotional items from local merchants.
Briggs took the name from the frontier, where boosters of small towns greeted passing wagon trains with gifts and supplies. In the late 1960s the company made 1.5 million visits a year. The home visits ended in 1998.
The welcome was a business, paid for by the merchants whose coupons were in the basket.