Somewhere between the €18 souvlaki and the “complimentary” bread that isn’t, visitors to Greece have started doing the math, and then heading straight to the nearest supermarket.
According to a recent NielsenIQ survey, tourists are increasingly opting out of restaurants and tavernas, choosing instead to assemble their own meals, not as a culinary experiment, but as a small act of financial self-defense.
While most foreign visitors still eat their main meals out, about 23% now regularly prepare their own breakfast.
Lunch follows at 19%, and even dinner—once sacred territory for long, wine-soaked evenings—has dropped to 15%. The real giveaway? A solid 41% rely on supermarkets for beach snacks, bypassing overpriced kiosks and seaside menus altogether.
Greek tourists, unsurprisingly, take this a step further. Six out of ten prepare their own breakfast, behaving more like temporary residents than holidaymakers.
And where do they shop? Mostly at supermarket chains (45%), followed closely by local grocers (42%). Discount chains like Lidl also perform strongly, especially among Germans, Romanians, and Poles—travel habits, it seems, don’t vary much across geographies.
Shopping baskets paint a familiar picture: fresh fruit, vegetables, bread, dairy, snacks, chocolate, and, of course, olive oil, often destined to be souvenirs rather than salad dressing. On the non-food side, sunscreen dominates, because nothing says Mediterranean holiday like trying not to burn.
The economic impact is no longer marginal. In August alone, one in five euros spent in supermarkets comes from island destinations, including Crete. Extended tourist seasons have pushed these regions to account for 16% of annual grocery turnover, a figure that continues to creep upward.
Meanwhile, supermarket sales in the islands and Crete rose by 10% and 9% respectively last year, comfortably outpacing the national average of 7.1%. Food service, in contrast, saw a 3.4% decline.
