Supermercado, Mercado, Carnicería: the 536 Stores We List

The four kinds of Mexican and Latin store in our US directory, what each one is good at, which words on the sign tell you what, and where they are.

Our US directory lists 536 active Mexican and Latin food stores across 11 states. That is the second-largest store network we have in any country, and it is the part of the directory most Americans do not know is there — far more people can name a Mexican restaurant near them than a Mexican grocery store. The two are usually within a few blocks of each other.

The stores are not interchangeable. We record four types, and the difference between them is the difference between a successful shopping trip and a wasted one. Here is what each one is.

The four types

Type	How many we list	What it is	What it is good at
Supermercado	268	A full-line Hispanic supermarket, often a chain, with produce, a butcher counter, a bakery and sometimes a tortillería and a hot-food counter	One-stop shopping. Dried chiles in quantity, fresh masa, cuts of meat, pan dulce, cal, piloncillo
Tienda mexicana	195	A neighborhood Mexican grocery — one or two rooms, sometimes a bakery or a tortilla plant attached	Specific regional products, fresh bread, the item nobody else carries. Ask the counter
Mercado	42	A meat market or small market hall, usually built around a carnicería	Meat cut to order: thin-sliced asada, cubed guisado, fresh chorizo, cecina, suadero
Tienda latina	31	A pan-Latin grocery serving several communities — Mexican, Central American, Caribbean	Cross-regional products. Excellent for plantain, yuca, Salvadoran cheeses; sometimes lighter on Mexican specifics

Reading the sign

The words on the storefront are reliable, and they are more specific than English signage usually is. Carnicería means there is a butcher counter, and in practice it means someone will cut to order. Tortillería means tortillas are made on site, usually daily, and that is the single best reason to choose one store over another. Panadería means bread baked on the premises, with the tray-and-tongs self-service system. Pastelería means cakes. Abarrotes means dry goods — a general grocery. Mercado on its own is broad and usually signals a small market with a meat counter.

A store with all four words on the sign is a full-line supermarket under another name, and those are often better than a chain for exactly the products this cuisine needs.

Where they are

State	Stores we list	Of which supermercados	Of which neighborhood tiendas	Of which mercados
Texas	67	34	28	3
California	62	45	13	3
Illinois	62	42	19	1
Florida	61	10	28	3
Arizona	54	34	13	6
Georgia	51	34	16	1
Nevada	49	31	11	7
Washington	46	8	24	9
New York	40	7	30	1
North Carolina	35	22	5	8
Colorado	9	1	8	0

The state mix tells you what kind of market each one is. New York and Washington State are dominated by neighborhood tiendas; Arizona, Nevada and California are dominated by supermarket chains, because that is where the Mexican supermarket format grew up. Washington and North Carolina carry the highest proportion of mercados — meat markets — in our data.

The chains, and why the chain matters

We record a chain name for 93 of the 536 stores, across 16 chains. The rest are independents, which is most of the network. The chain matters because it predicts the format: a chain store will have the full departments and consistent stock, an independent will have a narrower range and more unusual things in it.

Chain	Stores we list	States
Food City (Bashas)	19	Arizona
El Super	12	California, Arizona, Nevada
Cardenas Markets	9	California, Nevada, Arizona
La Bonita Supermarkets	8	Nevada
Los Altos Ranch Market (Cardenas)	7	Arizona
Northgate González Market	5	California
Mariana's Supermarkets	5	Nevada
Marketon	5	Nevada
Vallarta Supermarkets	4	California
El Rancho Supermercado	4	Texas
Carnicerias Jimenez	4	Illinois
La Michoacana Meat Market	3	Texas

Shopping one for the first time

Three practical notes. The butcher counter is the reason to come: ask for carne para asada and it will be sliced thin for the griddle, ask for carne para guisar and it will be cubed, and both cost less than the pre-packaged equivalent in a conventional supermarket. Chorizo is usually made in house and sold loose by weight, which is not the same product as the firm red tube in a plastic sleeve.

The produce section is where the chiles live, loose and by the pound — poblano, serrano, jalapeño, güero fresh; guajillo, ancho, pasilla, árbol dried. Buy what you need rather than a bag. And the bakery racks empty out: pan dulce is baked in the morning and again in the afternoon, and by evening the good trays are gone.

A few stores from different parts of the country, as a starting point: La Michoacana Meat Market (Houston, mexican grocery), Fiesta Mart (Houston, supermarket), Food City (Phoenix, supermarket), El Super (Phoenix, supermarket), Carnicerias Jimenez (Chicago, supermarket), Carnicerias Jimenez (Chicago, supermarket).

The restaurant inside the store

A pattern worth knowing, because it is invisible from the street: a large share of Mexican supermarkets and meat markets in the US run a hot-food counter at the back or the side. Sometimes it is a taquería with its own name and its own hours, sometimes it is a steam table with three guisados and a stack of tortillas. Several businesses in our restaurant directory are exactly this, listed under the store's name or their own.

It is usually the cheapest cooked Mexican food in the neighborhood, and on weekends it is where barbacoa, menudo and carnitas are sold by the pound to take home. If you are in a mercado on a Sunday morning and there is a line of people holding plastic containers, that is what the line is for.

What we do not record

Prices, stock levels and whether a given store has cal or fresh masa on any particular day. Those change weekly and a directory that claimed to know them would be lying. We do record Google ratings where Google has them — 251 of the 536 stores have one — and hours for 511 of them.

The full list is browsable by city in our US store directory. For what to do with what you buy, our substitutions guide covers what to look for and what not to replace.