Grocery store tourism is the latest viral travel trend — why travelers are treating supermarkets like cultural experiences

Every time I touch down in a new country, I purposefully ignore the tourist maps, skip the souvenir shops, and head straight for the nearest neighborhood supermarket. Grocery store tourism may sound like a mundane chore to the uninitiated, but walking the aisles has become my absolute favorite travel ritual. It is a habit born out of writing about the world for decades, realizing along the way that you can learn far more about a culture by looking at what people put in their shopping carts than by staring at a monument.

Grocery store tourism is the latest viral travel trend — why travelers are treating supermarkets like cultural experiences. Every time I touch down in a new country, I purposefully ignore the tourist maps, skip the souvenir shops, and head straight for the nearest neighborhood supermarket. Grocery store tourism may sound like a mundane chore to the uninitiated, but walking the aisles has become my absolute favorite travel ritual. It is a habit born out of writing about the world for decades, realizing along the way that you can learn far more about a culture by looking at what people put in their shopping carts than by staring at a monument. What used to be a quirky insider secret has officially exploded into a global travel movement known as "grocery store tourism." Travelers are changing how they explore the world, trading crowded museu...