Grocery Stores in Portugal: What’s Different, What It Costs, and Where I Shop

People ask me what grocery stores in Portugal are like, and the short answer for anyone coming from the US is: smaller, cheaper, and there are more of them.

Smaller isn’t a high bar—American supermarkets are enormous. But there’s no Walmart-style store here, and even the hypermarkets, the big out-of-town ones, would look modest parked next to a Supercenter. And your fridge and cupboards will be smaller too, unless you import your American fridge, so your shopping habits change. You won’t do the giant weekly stock-up you’d do at Walmart or Trader Joe’s.

There also isn’t a Whole Foods, which people coming from the US—particularly California—ask about a lot. Food in Europe is grown to better standards, so you won’t feel the same need. But if you want to shop organically all the time, that’s genuinely tricky here, because there’s no one large store where you can do a whole week’s shopping. The main chains—Continente, Pingo Doce and so on—have a very limited organic range. There’s Celeiro, but it’s very limited for fruit and vegetables. If you’re deciding where to live and organic shopping matters to you, look out for small organic grocery stores in the area.

What you get instead is density. I’ve driven across the US and gone hours without passing a supermarket. That doesn’t happen here. A small town in the middle of the Alentejo or central Portugal will have one, and often two or three.

On the same basket of groceries, you’re looking at close to 20% less than you’d pay in a US store.

My own routine: most of my shopping goes to Lidl, mainly because I have the best luck there with fruit and vegetables. I use Continente and Pingo Doce as well, and I head to Auchan or Intermarché when I want more variety than either of them carries. And I go to the market when I can, because the markets here really are good.

Though I’d make one prediction about that last part. Almost everyone plans to shop at the markets before they move. Almost nobody keeps it up. Convenience wins, and within a few months you’re stopping at the grocery store on the way home exactly like you did back home.

The main grocery chains in Portugal

Prices between the main chains are close enough that where you shop matters less than whether you use the loyalty apps. But they aren’t interchangeable, and Portuguese shoppers happily drive past three stores to buy one thing at a fourth—plenty of people get their bacalhau at Pingo Doce specifically.

One thing worth setting up in your first week: the fuel discounts.

Gas is far more expensive here than in the US, and several of the loyalty programs knock money off it. Continente’s card links to Galp, and Pingo Doce’s “20+20” promotions hand you fuel vouchers outright. If you’re driving at all, this is where the loyalty cards stop being a rounding error and start being real money.

Lidl

My pick, and where I do most of my grocery shopping.

Best quality for the price, best bread, and the store where I consistently have the most luck with fruit and vegetables. The store brand organic range is often cheaper than comparable products anywhere else.

If you’ve only met Lidl in the US, it’s the same idea but a much bigger part of daily life here. The limited range is the trade-off—you’ll probably never do all your shopping at one store. The other trade-off is the checkout: Lidl pushes you toward self-checkout and often runs only one staffed till, so getting out can take longer than the speed of the scanning suggests.

Loyalty: the Lidl Plus app, with rotating coupons. Worth having.
Online shopping: no.

Pingo Doce

The one you’ll find in city centers more reliably than anything else, which makes it the default for a lot of people. Good bakery, well-regarded meat and fish counters, decent store brand. Many larger stores also have a cafeteria, which is a very affordable place to eat a hot lunch.

Some people swear by it; others find the produce inconsistent and the layouts cramped.

Loyalty: Poupa Mais, and the periodic “20+20” promotions—spend €100, get €20 to spend in-store plus €20 in fuel vouchers—are the best-loved offer in Portuguese grocery shopping.
Online shopping: yes, via mercadao.pt.

Continente

The biggest chain in the country—the Kroger or Tesco of Portugal in terms of sheer presence. Large stores are full hypermarkets with electronics, housewares, books and toys alongside the food. The smaller Continente Bom Dia stores are neighborhood-sized.

It also tends to be the most expensive of the mainstream chains for everyday staples, which the loyalty card is designed to make you forget.

Loyalty: the Cartão Continente is the best program in the country. Points convert to money off, you get personalized coupons, and it links to fuel discounts at Galp. Plenty of people load credit onto the card and pay with it, which also sends receipts to their email.
Online shopping: yes, delivering across mainland Portugal—genuinely useful when you’re setting up a new home and don’t want to rent a van.

Auchan

Where I go when I want something I can’t get elsewhere.

More variety than the others, particularly international and specialty products, and the big out-of-town stores are the closest thing here to the scale an American is used to. A bit more expensive as a result. Older locals still call it Jumbo, which was its name until the French parent rebranded.

Auchan bought Minipreço and has been folding those stores into its own brands, so if a Minipreço near you has turned into a My Auchan or an Auchan Supermercado, that’s why.

Loyalty: the app, with a 10% rebate on store brand products and an express scan feature that lets you scan as you go and skip the line.
Online shopping: yes.

Intermarché

French-owned, widespread on the mainland, and worth the trip for the butcher counter—a lot of people go specifically for the meat. Like Auchan, better variety and slightly higher prices.

Some stores have gas stations, and a few have parking for campers, which is a very European thing to find attached to a grocery store.

Loyalty: yes, and the 25th of the month is the day cardholders redeem accumulated savings.
Online shopping: yes, at intermarche.pt.

Mercadona

I was disappointed, and I say that as someone who liked it in Spain. The Portuguese stores don’t have the range the Spanish ones do. It’s fine, and it stocks some things the other chains don’t, but it isn’t the event that Spanish Mercadona is. Worth a look if one opens near you; not worth planning around.

What it does well is the shopping experience—wide aisles, enough checkouts open that you don’t wait, smaller carts for smaller trips. The layout, meanwhile, is famously counterintuitive: rice in one corner, pasta somewhere else entirely, and regulars who still can’t find either.

Almost everything is store brand, which some people love and others find limiting. It started in the north and has been expanding fast, including into the Lisbon area and south of the river. Its first Algarve store opens in Portimão in October 2026.

Loyalty: none, by design—flat pricing instead of a coupons game.
Online shopping: no, not in Portugal.

Aldi

Nearly the same model as Lidl, and the rivalry between the two is fiercer than the differences justify. Aldi tends to carry slightly more specialty and international lines. Like Lidl, expect one till open and a push toward self-checkout, though newer stores handle this better than older ones.

Loyalty: none.
Online shopping: no.

E.Leclerc

French hypermarkets, in Portugal since 1995, with 21 stores. Almost always on the outskirts, so you’ll need a car. Good variety, competitive prices, a strong French import section, and locations that pile on gas stations, car washes and laundries. If there’s one near you it’s worth knowing; if there isn’t, you’re not missing much you can’t get at Auchan.

Apolónia (Algarve only)

A family-run Algarve chain with three stores—Almancil, Galé near Albufeira, and Lagoa—and the closest thing in Portugal to a genuinely upmarket grocery store.

It’s more expensive than the mainstream chains and it doesn’t pretend otherwise. What you’re paying for is imported products and a better class of everything: a wider and much more international selection of alcohol, imported vegan products you won’t see elsewhere, a serious fish counter, and a wine section people drive to. They’ll also pack your bags for you, which after six months of racing a Lidl conveyor belt feels close to a spa treatment.

Worth knowing about if you’re in the central Algarve, particularly for the things you can’t get anywhere else. Not somewhere most people do the full weekly shop.

The islands are a different question

Everything above is about mainland Portugal. If you’re looking at Madeira or the Azores, the answer changes, and it changes a lot depending on which island.

Madeira is fine. There are Continente stores and Pingo Doce stores at reasonable sizes. You won’t have the choice you’d get on the mainland, but you’re not going to feel stranded either.

In the Azores, the size of the island is the whole story.

São Miguel does well. There’s a large Continente, and Pingo Doce arrived in 2022 and now has several stores across the island. Terceira also has decent-sized stores. Considering these are mid-Atlantic islands, both are bigger than you’d expect, even if the variety doesn’t match the mainland.

It’s the smaller islands where you notice. On Santa Maria the main store is a Continente and it’s small, with a much thinner selection and higher prices. Corvo, with a few hundred residents, is another thing entirely. As a rough rule, grocery costs are lower on the bigger Azorean islands and climb as the islands get smaller.

If you’re seriously considering one of the smaller islands, treat the grocery store as something to go and look at before you commit, not an afterthought.

Is there a Walmart in Portugal?

No. Nor Target, Trader Joe’s, or Whole Foods.

The closest thing is a large Continente, Auchan, or E.Leclerc, which carry housewares and electronics alongside the food. None of them approach a Supercenter for scale or range. Portugal generally keeps its shopping in separate boxes—you go to Worten for electronics, Casa for housewares, Leroy Merlin for DIY.

For anything you can’t find in a store, most people here use amazon.es or amazon.de, both of which deliver to Portugal. Don’t order from a US retailer and have it shipped—import duty and taxes on arrival will wipe out any saving. Shop inside the EU.

Is there a Costco in Portugal?

No, but there is one in Spain. If you’re in the Algarve or the eastern Alentejo, a stock-up run across the border can make sense, and Spanish prices are often lower on top of it. Costco Spain also carries things that are genuinely hard to find here—beef jerky, canned pumpkin, cranberry sauce. From anywhere further north, the membership plus the fuel plus the day isn’t worth it.

The domestic equivalent is Makro or Recheio, both cash-and-carry chains aimed at businesses rather than the public. If you’re self-employed here with a NIF and registered activity, it’s worth asking about a customer card—the fruit, vegetables and milk in particular are cheaper than retail.

What you won’t find, and where to get it

The international range in a standard Portuguese store is thin. You’ll find something—a Mexican shelf, an Asian shelf—but the quality and choice are basic. I buy some of it in the big Continente and Auchan stores when I’m not fussed, and go elsewhere when I am.

For spices, go to an Indian-owned shop.

There are far more of these in Portugal than there used to be, and they’re where I buy spices now. The focus is Indian and Pakistani, but the selection is usually good and the quality is noticeably better than anything on a supermarket shelf.

American products

The things Americans reliably miss, and what to do about each:

• Drip coffee. Perfectly possible at home if you bring or buy a machine. What doesn’t exist is the culture around it—coffee here is espresso and it’s a sitting-down business. You can ask for it to take away, but it won’t taste like home. See ordering coffee in Portugal.
• Half-and-half. Not sold premixed here, and asking for it by name gets you nowhere. Mix milk and natas yourself, or use the small coffee creamers.
• Coffee creamer. Not in cafés, but Coffee Mate turns up at Flavers and Glood.
• Sour cream (nata ácida). Sometimes at Auchan, Aldi, and El Corte Inglés in Lisbon. Most people give up and use crème fraîche.
• Buttermilk (leitelho). El Corte Inglés, Celeiro, sometimes Aldi.
• Peanut butter. Available everywhere, but smaller jars and more expensive than you’re used to.
• Ranch dressing. Hard to find in Portuguese stores—Europe runs on mayonnaise instead. The Overseas stores in the Algarve carry it.
• Mexican ingredients. Beyond Old El Paso kits, you’re ordering from Casa México, Martha Tomé, or The Chilli Experience.
• Canned pumpkin, root beer, pumpkin spice, boxed mac and cheese, beef jerky, Frank’s hot sauce. Glood and Flavers cover most of this between them.
• Bagels. Continente and Pingo Doce sell Bimbo bagels, and they’re not good. Order from a specialist bakery instead.

Glood has stores in Lisbon, Porto and Coimbra and is the most useful single stop for American products. Liberty Store covers Lisbon and several of the Azores. My American Market, based in France, ships across Europe.

British, Brazilian, Asian and everything else

The British stores are worth knowing about even if you’re not British. They’re the best-stocked foreign grocery stores in the country and they carry more than you’d expect—not just canned goods and tea, but fresh produce too, including things like rhubarb that simply don’t appear in a Portuguese store. Prices have climbed over the past few years along with everything else, so they’re no longer the bargain they once were, but they remain the answer for a lot of hard-to-find items.

• British. Overseas has several Algarve locations, including Albufeira Retail Park near Guia and Portimão, with its own butcher doing British cuts. The Food Co. in Almancil stocks 7,500-odd products including Tesco’s store brand. GB Superstore in Cascais serves the Lisbon side. Online, British Cornershop carries over 12,000 products. More in the foods Brits miss.
• Indian and Pakistani. Increasingly common across the country, and the best place to buy spices.
• Brazilian. Brazilians are the largest non-Portuguese community here, so this is well served—Mercado Brasil Tropical has stores in Lisbon, Odivelas, Cascais, Vila Franca de Xira, Porto and Almada, and Sabor Brasil delivers nationwide.
• Asian. Most big cities have at least one Asian grocer; in Lisbon there are several around Martim Moniz. Ayur stocks Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Middle Eastern products.
• Mexican. Casa México delivers to the mainland and the islands.
• Dutch and German. Go Dutch in Lagos and Deutsche Metzgerei at Vila Vita Parc near Porches, both in the Algarve.

El Corte Inglés in Lisbon has one of the widest international food halls in the country. It is also the most expensive way to buy any of it.

What to expect once you’re actually shopping here

The key thing to take away is that grocery stores in Portugal are different. They’re smaller to begin with, and that has knock-on effects for your fridge and cupboard space. They have a smaller international section and less variety generally. You’re in Portugal, so expect Portuguese products—Portuguese people love Portuguese things, and there’s less of a culture of buying international products than there is in the US.

The counters are more adventurous

You’ll find fish counters in most decent-sized stores, which is less common in the US. Be aware that they give off a strong smell, particularly the bacalhau section.

The meat counter is more adventurous too. You’ll find chicken feet, a pig’s head, and—depending on which part of the country you’re in—an entire frozen pig. This is just part of Portuguese culture, but it’s worth knowing about if you’re not used to it.

Checkout culture is different

You’ll notice people chatting at the checkout in Portugal, but generally only when the cashier already knows them, and more with older shoppers than younger ones. In the US a cashier will chat with anyone—how’s your day, any plans for the weekend. That isn’t really the case here. You have to build the relationship first.

It’s also slow. Not US slow, where the hold-up is that everyone ahead of you is buying a month’s food at once, but slow in its own way—things simply move at a gentler pace. I use self-checkout wherever it’s offered, especially for a handful of items, and it saves more time here than it would back home.

You bag your own groceries everywhere in Portugal, and at Lidl and Aldi in particular you bag them fast. The cashiers there are told to put products through as quickly as possible, so have your bags open before the first item lands.

You’ll be asked for your NIF, constantly

Nobody asks for your Social Security number at a US checkout, so being asked for your NIF number at every till takes some getting used to. You do get used to it. Memorize the number in Portuguese and hand it over.

It’s worth doing, and not only for the tax side. Every receipt issued under your NIF is another piece of evidence that you actually live here, spending money in the country week after week. That’s a record you’ll be glad of.

People ask me what grocery stores in Portugal are like, and the short answer for anyone coming from the US is: smaller, cheaper, and there are more of them.

Smaller isn’t a high bar—American supermarkets are enormous. But there’s no Walmart-style store here, and even the hypermarkets, the big out-of-town ones, would look modest parked next to a Supercenter. And your fridge and cupboards will be smaller too, unless you import your American fridge, so your shopping habits change. You won’t do the giant weekly stock-up you’d do at Walmart or Trader Joe’s.

There also isn’t a Whole Foods, which people coming from the US—particularly California—ask about a lot. Food in Europe is grown to better standards, so you won’t feel the same need. But if you want to shop organically all the time, that’s genuinely tricky here, because there’s no one large store where you can do a whole week’s shopping. The main chains—Continente, Pingo Doce and so on—have a very limited organic range. There’s Celeiro, but it’s very limited for fruit and vegetables. If you’re deciding where to live and organic shopping matters to you, look out for small organic grocery stores in the area.

What you get instead is density. I’ve driven across the US and gone hours without passing a supermarket. That doesn’t happen here. A small town in the middle of the Alentejo or central Portugal will have one, and often two or three.

On the same basket of groceries, you’re looking at close to 20% less than you’d pay in a US store.

My own routine: most of my shopping goes to Lidl, mainly because I have the best luck there with fruit and vegetables. I use Continente and Pingo Doce as well, and I head to Auchan or Intermarché when I want more variety than either of them carries. And I go to the market when I can, because the markets here really are good.

Though I’d make one prediction about that last part. Almost everyone plans to shop at the markets before they move. Almost nobody keeps it up. Convenience wins, and within a few months you’re stopping at the grocery store on the way home exactly like you did back home.

The main grocery chains in Portugal

Prices between the main chains are close enough that where you shop matters less than whether you use the loyalty apps. But they aren’t interchangeable, and Portuguese shoppers happily drive past three stores to buy one thing at a fourth—plenty of people get their bacalhau at Pingo Doce specifically.

Lidl

My pick, and where I do most of my grocery shopping.

Best quality for the price, best bread, and the store where I consistently have the most luck with fruit and vegetables. The store brand organic range is often cheaper than comparable products anywhere else.

If you’ve only met Lidl in the US, it’s the same idea but a much bigger part of daily life here. The limited range is the trade-off—you’ll probably never do all your shopping at one store.

Loyalty: the Lidl Plus app, with rotating coupons. Worth having.
Online shopping: no.

Pingo Doce

The one you’ll find in city centers more reliably than anything else, which makes it the default for a lot of people. Good bakery, well-regarded meat and fish counters, decent store brand. Many larger stores also have a cafeteria, which is a very affordable place to eat a hot lunch.

Some people swear by it; others find the produce inconsistent and the layouts cramped.

Loyalty: Poupa Mais, and the periodic “20+20” promotions—spend €100, get €20 to spend in-store plus €20 in fuel vouchers—are the best-loved offer in Portuguese grocery shopping.
Online shopping: yes, via mercadao.pt.

Continente

The biggest chain in the country—the Kroger or Tesco of Portugal in terms of sheer presence. Large stores are full hypermarkets with electronics, housewares, books and toys alongside the food. The smaller Continente Bom Dia stores are neighborhood-sized.

It also tends to be the most expensive of the mainstream chains for everyday staples, which the loyalty card is designed to make you forget.

Loyalty: the Cartão Continente is the best program in the country. Points convert to money off, you get personalized coupons, and it links to fuel discounts at Galp. Plenty of people load credit onto the card and pay with it, which also sends receipts to their email.
Online shopping: yes, delivering across mainland Portugal—genuinely useful when you’re setting up a new home and don’t want to rent a van.

Auchan

Where I go when I want something I can’t get elsewhere.

More variety than the others, particularly international and specialty products, and the big out-of-town stores are the closest thing here to the scale an American is used to. A bit more expensive as a result. Older locals still call it Jumbo, which was its name until the French parent rebranded.

Auchan bought Minipreço and has been folding those stores into its own brands, so if a Minipreço near you has turned into a My Auchan or an Auchan Supermercado, that’s why.

Loyalty: the app, with a 10% rebate on store brand products and an express scan feature that lets you scan as you go and skip the line.
Online shopping: yes.

Intermarché

French-owned, widespread on the mainland, and worth the trip for the butcher counter—a lot of people go specifically for the meat. Like Auchan, better variety and slightly higher prices.

Some stores have gas stations, and a few have parking for campers, which is a very European thing to find attached to a grocery store.

Loyalty: yes, and the 25th of the month is the day cardholders redeem accumulated savings.
Online shopping: yes, at intermarche.pt.

Mercadona

I was disappointed, and I say that as someone who liked it in Spain. The Portuguese stores don’t have the range the Spanish ones do. It’s fine, and it stocks some things the other chains don’t, but it isn’t the event that Spanish Mercadona is. Worth a look if one opens near you; not worth planning around.

What it does well is the shopping experience—wide aisles, enough checkouts open that you don’t wait, smaller carts for smaller trips. The layout, meanwhile, is famously counterintuitive: rice in one corner, pasta somewhere else entirely, and regulars who still can’t find either.

Almost everything is store brand, which some people love and others find limiting. It started in the north and has been expanding fast, including into the Lisbon area and south of the river. Its first Algarve store opens in Portimão in October 2026.

Loyalty: none, by design—flat pricing instead of a coupons game.
Online shopping: no, not in Portugal.

Aldi

Nearly the same model as Lidl, and the rivalry between the two is fiercer than the differences justify. Aldi tends to carry slightly more specialty and international lines. Store experience varies a lot by location—some have too few checkouts open, newer ones have self-checkout.

Loyalty: none.
Online shopping: no.

E.Leclerc

French hypermarkets, in Portugal since 1995, with 21 stores. Almost always on the outskirts, so you’ll need a car. Good variety, competitive prices, a strong French import section, and locations that pile on gas stations, car washes and laundries. If there’s one near you it’s worth knowing; if there isn’t, you’re not missing much you can’t get at Auchan.

Is there a Walmart in Portugal?

No. Nor Target, Trader Joe’s, or Whole Foods.

The closest thing is a large Continente, Auchan, or E.Leclerc, which carry housewares and electronics alongside the food. None of them approach a Supercenter for scale or range. Portugal generally keeps its shopping in separate boxes—you go to Worten for electronics, Casa for housewares, Leroy Merlin for DIY.

For anything you can’t find in a store, most people here use amazon.es or amazon.de, both of which deliver to Portugal. Don’t order from a US retailer and have it shipped—import duty and taxes on arrival will wipe out any saving. Shop inside the EU.

Is there a Costco in Portugal?

No, but there is one in Spain. If you’re in the Algarve or the eastern Alentejo, a stock-up run across the border can make sense, and Spanish prices are often lower on top of it. Costco Spain also carries things that are genuinely hard to find here—beef jerky, canned pumpkin, cranberry sauce. From anywhere further north, the membership plus the fuel plus the day isn’t worth it.

The domestic equivalent is Makro or Recheio, both cash-and-carry chains aimed at businesses rather than the public. If you’re self-employed here with a NIF and registered activity, it’s worth asking about a customer card—the fruit, vegetables and milk in particular are cheaper than retail.

What you won’t find, and where to get it

The international range in a standard Portuguese store is thin. You’ll find something—a Mexican shelf, an Asian shelf—but the quality and choice are basic. I buy some of it in the big Continente and Auchan stores when I’m not fussed, and go to an Asian grocer or order online when I am.

American products

The things Americans reliably miss, and what to do about each:

• Drip coffee to go. Coffee here is espresso and it’s a sitting-down business. You can ask for it to take away. It won’t taste like home. See ordering coffee in Portugal.
• Half-and-half. Doesn’t exist as a product. Easy enough to make.
• Coffee creamer. Not in cafés, but Coffee Mate turns up at Flavers and Glood.
• Sour cream (nata ácida). Sometimes at Auchan, Aldi, and El Corte Inglés in Lisbon. Most people give up and use crème fraîche.
• Buttermilk (leitelho). El Corte Inglés, Celeiro, sometimes Aldi.
• Peanut butter. Available everywhere, but smaller jars and more expensive than you’re used to.
• Mexican ingredients. Beyond Old El Paso kits, you’re ordering from Casa México, Martha Tomé, or The Chilli Experience.
• Canned pumpkin, root beer, pumpkin spice, boxed mac and cheese, beef jerky, Frank’s hot sauce, ranch dressing. Glood and Flavers cover most of this between them.
• Bagels. Continente and Pingo Doce sell Bimbo bagels. For a real one you’re ordering from a specialist.
• Diners. Not a thing. You can get coffee at 11pm; you can’t get pancakes with it.

Glood has stores in Lisbon, Porto and Coimbra and is the most useful single stop for American products. Liberty Store covers Lisbon and several of the Azores. My American Market, based in France, ships across Europe.

British, Brazilian, Asian and everything else

• British. Overseas has several Algarve locations, including Albufeira Retail Park near Guia and Portimão, with its own butcher doing British cuts. The Food Co. in Almancil stocks 7,500-odd products including Tesco’s store brand. GB Superstore in Cascais serves the Lisbon side. Online, British Cornershop carries over 12,000 products. More in the foods Brits miss.
• Brazilian. Brazilians are the largest non-Portuguese community here, so this is well served—Mercado Brasil Tropical has stores in Lisbon, Odivelas, Cascais, Vila Franca de Xira, Porto and Almada, and Sabor Brasil delivers nationwide.
• Asian. Most big cities have at least one Asian grocer; in Lisbon there are several around Martim Moniz. Ayur stocks Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Middle Eastern products.
• Mexican. Casa México delivers to the mainland and the islands.
• Dutch and German. Go Dutch in Lagos and Deutsche Metzgerei at Vila Vita Parc near Porches, both in the Algarve.

El Corte Inglés in Lisbon has one of the widest international food halls in the country. It is also the most expensive way to buy any of it.

What to expect once you’re actually shopping here

The key thing to take away is that grocery stores in Portugal are different. They’re smaller to begin with, and that has knock-on effects for your fridge and cupboard space. They have a smaller international section and less variety generally. You’re in Portugal, so expect Portuguese products—Portuguese people love Portuguese things, and there’s less of a culture of buying international products than there is in the US.

The counters are more adventurous

You’ll find fish counters in most decent-sized stores, which is less common in the US. Be aware that they give off a strong smell, particularly the bacalhau section.

The meat counter is more adventurous too. You’ll find chicken feet, a pig’s head, and—depending on which part of the country you’re in—an entire frozen pig. This is just part of Portuguese culture, but it’s worth knowing about if you’re not used to it.

Checkout culture is different

You’ll notice people chatting at the checkout in Portugal, but generally only when the cashier already knows them, and more with older shoppers than younger ones. In the US a cashier will chat with anyone—how’s your day, any plans for the weekend. That isn’t really the case here. You have to build the relationship first.

You bag your own groceries everywhere in Portugal, and at Lidl and Aldi in particular you bag them fast. The cashiers there are told to put products through as quickly as possible, so have your bags open before the first item lands.

You’ll be asked for your NIF, constantly

Nobody asks for your Social Security number at a US checkout, so being asked for your NIF number at every till takes some getting used to. You do get used to it. Memorize the number in Portuguese and hand it over.

It’s worth doing as using your NIF shows AIMA you’re actively living in Portugal. This could be important come renewal time.