Portugal Essentials Guide: Part 1, Convenience Stores
After living in Lisbon for a month, I’ve picked up a few things about European life, and the routines of the Portuguese in particular. Upon arriving, I quickly realized one of my main frustrations would be having to ask “what’s the Portuguese equivalent of _______” and figuring out where to find different basics essentials so I could get settled. For some reason, this is something that most guidebooks tend to totally ignore, so I’m putting together this series as the crash course I’d give anyone visiting a city in Portugal for more than a couple of days.
Convenience Stores?
On the day I arrived, I asked my host where the nearest supermarket was. I was a bit surprised-and more than a little disappointed-when I wandered in and it was smaller than a Circle K.
Don’t get me wrong, I love convenience stores. The konbini in Japan, for example, can do no wrong by me — Lawson, 7-Eleven, and FamilyMart pack a great punch for their size. You can get hot food, dozens of varieties of drinks, and delicious, freshly packaged snacks and sandwiches. But when you’re looking for somewhere to get groceries for the week, something at that scale understandably falls a bit short.
On the other hand, I grew up in Texas, not far from the largest convenience store in the world. With 68,000 square feet of retail space, it could fit 22 average size corner stores or even 2 typical Whole Foods stores inside. It has 120 gas pumps, 80 restroom stalls, and 1,000 parking spaces. It’s awesome, but completely unnecessary. It’s a convenience store that could be rightfully called a supermarket size-wise, but you still can’t get all your daily essentials there. It’s just not geared to that.
What I found was Minipreço, which wasn’t quite like anything I’d seen before. It’s a chain, and most outlets are about the size of an urban convenience store. But it sells fresh fruit and vegetables, bottles of milk and yogurt, cereal, bread, basic household and bathroom products, and more. Most of them have a bakery for fresh bread, and even a small deli counter or rotisserie. They’re sometimes cramped, with tall, narrow aisles. But they’re great for what they are. It’s like your neighborhood grocery store, just edited down to a quarter of its size.
Turns out, mercado here usually refers to little hole-in-the-wall markets which are smaller still, with just one or two fridges and a row of goods. So, by comparison, these little supermercados really are super! Just not what you’re used to if you’re an American translating it literally in your mind.
And yet, with all that convenience, it’s not quite a typical convenience store either. There are a couple of varieties, the Minipreço Express (yellow branding) and the Minipreço Market (green branding). The Market is a bit larger, maybe 1.5–2x the size of the Express outlets, but there are no grab and go items to be found there, which kind of surprised me. At the Express, they do sell a few cold drinks, but it’s just water, beer, wine, and a small selection of sodas and juices (I’m talking 5–10 options total). That’s about the best you’ll find anywhere, though.
During tourist season, expect it to be fairly picked over, but I found them to be quite reliable and cheap when I needed a quick drink and a snack or some gum. The independent convenience stores tended to charge quite a bit more for the same items (sometimes double), and on top of that, Minipreço has pretty solid discounts and sales going regularly. There’s bound to be one no more than a ten minute walk from any populated area in the major Portuguese cities, and they saved the day on more than one occasion when I started feeling a little dehydrated after walking around in the sun. It pays to have a name you know you can put into Google Maps!
