Grocery Store Tourism Is One of Travel’s Most Overlooked Cultural Experiences

A bag of shrimp chips, a perfectly wrapped onigiri, a tin of Portuguese sardines. They’re just snacks, but for many travelers, these small purchases are becoming cultural souvenirs in their own right.

Grocery stores are emerging as unexpected windows into local culture and daily life. For travel marketers and brands, it’s a trend worth watching: Videos of traveler snack hauls and local product discoveries shared on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube are becoming powerful new forms of destination storytelling.

In these videos, creators often take viewers inside grocery stores and local markets in cities like Tokyo, Seoul, Oaxaca, and Paris or showcase their purchases after returning home, spotlighting hyperlocal snacks, seasonal specialties, and quirky packaging. These videos regularly rack up millions of views, with followers asking for exact store locations, aisle recommendations, and shopping tips as part of their travel planning.

The trend reflects a broader shift in traveler priorities — especially for younger travelers — toward deeper forms of cultural immersion. For hospitality and destination leaders, it’s a cue to pay attention to the everyday food rituals, local ingredients, and retail spaces that shape how a place feels and tells its story.

The Grocery Store as Cultural Theater

In Japan, konbini (Japanese convenience stores) like Lawson and FamilyMart are everyday essentials that also offer a glimpse into Japanese culture. Far from their American counterparts, Japanese 7-Elevens are known for their high-quality offerings, like freshly made egg salad sandwiches, premium bottled teas, and an array of seasonal sweets.

Across all konbini, travelers can typically find products such as beautifully wrapped onigiri, sakura-flavored KitKats, and limited-edition desserts like mochi-filled daifuku or custard puddings shaped like anime characters.

In Los Angeles, the upscale grocery chain Erewhon has become a destination. It’s part wellness temple and part social scene, with smoothies like the $20 Hailey Bieber “Strawberry Glaze Skin Smoothie” and snacks ranging from mushroom and cola-flavored adaptogenic sparkling water to activated charcoal lemonade.

In Paris, Monoprix and La Grande Épicerie spotlight the city’s refined approach to everyday indulgence. Travelers can find artfully packaged madeleines, truffle-infused potato chips, and entire aisles dedicated to regional cheeses, mustards, and aperitif-ready snacks that capture the flavor of French daily life.

The appeal lies in the mix of the familiar and the surprising. Spotting a favorite global brand reimagined for a local audience or stumbling upon a hyper-local specialty not found on restaurant menus can be a small but delightful moment of cultural connection that turns an ordinary errand into a memorable experience.

TikTok Made Them Buy It: Global Snack Culture Goes Viral

TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram have turned niche snack discoveries into viral sensations with global reach. 

Short-form TikTok videos and Instagram Reels showcase quick, visually engaging snack hauls, while YouTube creators often dive deeper into storytelling around local flavors and food culture. Products like Korean banana milk, Thai Lay’s in unusual flavors, and artisanal tinned fish from Lisbon often gain viral attention and are shared, reviewed, and sought out by travelers.

This wave of snack-based storytelling has grown so large that it’s influencing retail strategies and foot traffic of local markets and grocery stores worldwide. It’s also reshaping traveler behavior, sometimes shifting purchases away from typical souvenirs toward thoughtfully chosen pantry staples that carry aesthetic appeal or cultural meaning. 

Finding Authenticity in the Mundane

Grocery stores and markets offer a more unfiltered snapshot of daily life that restaurants alone often can’t provide. Prices hint at economic realities, packaging reveals design sensibilities, and seasonal items reflect what a region values at a given moment. In a travel landscape where cafes and dining concepts increasingly blur together, grocery stores offer a rare sense of authenticity.

Writer Kyle Chayka, who described the phenomenon in his classic piece “Welcome to Airspace,” said, “Restaurants, hotels, and cafes have often become so overdetermined by algorithmic trends that anything more normal or outside the modes of trendiness feels more real. Cultural uniqueness might lie more in a very mundane space now than in a hyper-online, self-aware, designed space such as a restaurant. 

Dan Frommer, founder and editor of The New Consumer, agreed. “Grocery stores generally cater to locals, and often to all income groups,” he said. “They primarily sell products used in daily life, as opposed to gifts or souvenirs.” “It’s economical, fun, and a real window into how people really live in Rio, Tokyo, or Stockholm. And when every coffee shop starts to look the same, what’s a more authentic cultural experience than that?”

Skift founder and CEO Rafat Ali has also written about “the flattening of food cultures,” describing how tourism shapes what gets cooked, served, and remembered. “Generations grow up assuming that the distilled version served to tourists is the real thing,” he wrote. He argues that the best way to push back is by slowing down, digging deeper, and paying closer attention to everyday food rituals.

The Strategic Opportunity for Travel Brands

With grocery stores and snack culture emerging as meaningful travel touchpoints, brands have a unique chance to weave local products throughout the traveler journey. 

Hotels can reimagine the minibar as a curated snack shelf, featuring quirky, regional products and ingredients. At the Andaz Maui at Wailea Resort, for example, guests can find local staples in their mini bar, like Maui Style chips, Cook Kwee’s Maui cookies, Maui Brewing Company Island Root Beer, and Aloha Maid juice. Takeaway snack boxes with products chosen by local tastemakers can also become narrative tools that package a place through flavor. 

Meanwhile, tourism boards and destination marketers can partner with local grocers and markets to create itineraries that blend education, exploration, and edible souvenirs or highlight local products, snacks, and unique grocery stores or markets in their campaigns.

For example, Korea Tourism Organization recently shared a TikTok video showing the top five must-try Korean snacks, including corn soup-flavored Kkobuk Chips, Kkotgerang (crab-shaped seafood crunch), and Nuneul Gamja potato sticks. They can also collaborate with content creators to produce snack-focused city guides or behind-the-scenes videos that showcase how regional favorites are sourced, made, or enjoyed.

Digital content is helping transform these everyday moments into shared online experiences. Brands can tap into these conversations by sharing their own stories about local products, flavors, and food rituals through social media videos, influencer partnerships, and curated itineraries that connect them with a destination and inspire future travelers.

Grocery store tourism may sound like another short-lived TikTok trend, but it taps into something essential: the desire to know a place through its everyday rituals. For today’s travelers, culture lives not just in museums or must-visit restaurants, but also in the snack aisle, the checkout line, and the small choices that shape everyday life.

Alison McCarthy is Content Director of SkiftX, Skift’s in-house custom content agency. She writes about the cultural shifts reshaping how and why we travel.

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