No me gustan los almacenes

April 19, 2011 1:04 PM

Why are people in Mexico not interested in "grocery stores"?

Looking through some survey data that looked at interest levels in different Points of Interest in Mexico.

"Grocery store" -- translated to "Almacén" -- was rated/ranked surprisingly low compared to similar research done in the US. I'm not familiar enough with the market to come up with a good reason why this may be.

Any ideas? Is "Almacén" a weird translation for "grocery store"? Or are grocery stores just not that important in Mexico?

posted by shotgunbooty to Food & Drink (20 answers total)

I was in acapulco a few years ago and when our cook went to get groceries she went to the wal-mart in town. Maybe you need to expand the terminology that you're searching with. Perhaps using store names and not almacen?
posted by kookywon at 1:09 PM on April 19, 2011

also, you might try 'super mercado' (super market) which is a pretty general term .
posted by kookywon at 1:11 PM on April 19, 2011 [7 favorites]

This may be regionally specific, but where I live (Argentina), 'Almacén' means 'grocery store', sort of, but nothing you would ever think of in the US as a grocery store would be called an almacén. Its more like an old-timey thing. It might be used to be cute, the way a quaint shop in Brooklyn might reappropriate some old time words. The big grocery store chains from other countries like Disco/Jumbo/Carrefour are called 'hipermercados' or 'supermercados'. And then people call the small stores either what they sell ('carniceria', 'verduleria') or something different, like what you'd call a deli or a bodega in New York people call a 'chino' here, or the really small version of same is called a 'kiosco'.

I guess in English it would be like saying "general store", like sure, its a grocery store, technically, but not in any way that you would ever use to describe a place where you buy your groceries in modern times.
posted by jeb at 1:12 PM on April 19, 2011 [6 favorites]

When you google image search almacen, you get a lot of photos of warehouses. Try supermercado or super instead? In a lot of countries, "grocery store" means an old fashioned sort of store while supermarket refers to what we call grocery stores in the US.
posted by MadamM at 1:14 PM on April 19, 2011

Yeah, when I lived in Mexico "supermercado" was a much more common catch-all than "almacen." In fact, I never heard the latter.

I would always just say I was going to the "tienda," and let context do the work.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 1:14 PM on April 19, 2011

I'm not sure what "points of interest" you're referring to here (it would be helpful to know), but there are plenty of grocery stores in Mexico - one example, from Hoover's by way of Wikipedia:

Chedraui is "Mexico's fourth-largest retailer, the supermarket giant sells groceries, apparel, and non-perishable items in about 90 self-service Chedraui stores operating in 13 eastern and southern Mexican states.

Wal-Mart, CostCo, Comercial Mexicana, and Soriana are a few of the other large chains - there are also a lot of smaller, independent grocery stores.
posted by ryanshepard at 1:14 PM on April 19, 2011

Supermercados are very big in Mexico. In addition to Walmart, there's Soriana, the Texas supermarket chain HEB is in Monterrey. There's Calimax, Comercial Mexicana, and tons more. There's warehouse clubs like Sam's and Costco.
posted by birdherder at 1:18 PM on April 19, 2011

I must assume it is a problem with the translation.

As others have noted, we have small, medium, big, and huge grocery stores:
Soriana, Chedraui, Walmart, Comercial Mexicana, Mega Comercial Mexicana, Superama....

Plus there is a booming market for mini-convenience stores:
HEB, 7-eleven, Oxxo....
posted by theKik at 1:24 PM on April 19, 2011

n-ting a translation issue, most Mexicans will not think of an almacén as a grocery store. The term is "super" (or supermercado) or a more generic "tienda".

In fact a recent national marketing campaign for Comercial Mexicana had the slogan "Y tu, ¿Vas al super o a la comer?" -- Do you go to the super or to the Comer(cial Mexicana)?
posted by fjom at 1:32 PM on April 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

In Mafalda (Argentinean comic strip), Manolito's grocery store was referred to as an almacen.
http://donmanolo2.sourceforge.net/manolito3.jpg
posted by bentley at 1:33 PM on April 19, 2011

Supermercado is a more appropriate word to search by. To me, an almacen is a warehouse or storage area.
posted by DrGirlfriend at 1:33 PM on April 19, 2011

In Mafalda (Argentinean comic strip), Manolito's grocery store was referred to as an almacen.

I have found that Argentines can sometimes use very Argentina-specific words. So it's possible that they say almacén as their normal word for supermarket, but I wouldn't assume that it's applicable to all of Latin America.
posted by DrGirlfriend at 1:37 PM on April 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

I don't know about Mexico, but in Tucson and Phoenix, not only are there lots of Super Mercados, but there are a wide variety of Carnicerias (meat shops) or Panderias (bakeries). Carnicerias are essentially like a Fresh & Easy or a very small grocery store - they have a small selection of just about everything. I have always assumed (I know, right?) that this is a cultural carryover by the Mexican immigrants to the area.
posted by LyndsayMW at 1:58 PM on April 19, 2011

Mexican here. Yeah, almacén is not a very usual word, it sounds kind of old-fashioned and I wouldn't identify it immediately as a grocery store. As others have mentioned, words like super, tienda, mercado, tianguis (a smaller itinerant mercado), tiendita are much more common.

Mexicans love costco like west la motherfuckers love costco.

Guess where I'm heading to right now?
posted by clearlydemon at 2:57 PM on April 19, 2011 [3 favorites]

yeah, some variant of mercado or even bodega. I visit Merida and Progreso in the Yucatan each year and I've never seen "Almacén" but I visit the Superama, which locals seem to call the Super Mercado or I visit the bodega where I can get everything from pool noodles to fresh fruit.
posted by FlamingBore at 3:17 PM on April 19, 2011

RAE indicates almacén is more of a wholesaler, in general. Individual countries have plenty of vocab variation, naturally.

Definitely search super(mercado) and tienda.
posted by asciident at 3:18 PM on April 19, 2011

but I wouldn't assume that it's applicable to all of Latin America

Sorry, I wasn't assuming it, I just meant it as a data point, that the word was used *somewhere*. I had to cut my post short (too short). In Peru, food was purchased at a bodega or at a supermercado (if not at an outdoor market).
posted by bentley at 7:32 PM on April 19, 2011

In an American high school textbook, "almacén" was used for "department store" (i.e., something at a mall). In a small town in Paraguay, "almacén" referred to a small store that might be comparable to a "corner store" or "convenience store" in the United States. Clearly different contexts lead to different meanings.

Note that "almacén" is an Arabic root word, and that Arabic root words, in Spanish, have been on the (very slow but still noticeable) way out in Spanish since the Reconquista. This may align with the fact that various people above have referred to the word as sounding "old-timey" or "old-fashioned."
posted by lewedswiver at 9:29 PM on April 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

Dont forget Bodega Aurerra in mexico ;)
posted by freddymetz at 7:31 AM on April 20, 2011

In northern Mexico and Baja I have been in supermercados which are just like American groceries. A newer, larger type is the hipermercado which is a step up from a supermercado.
posted by JJ86 at 7:40 AM on April 20, 2011