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Not so many years ago, supermarkets were a rare breed in Crete.
They have now sprung up all over the place in all the cities. Out
of the cities you still need to rely on smaller shops, but they too
are growing in size.
At present there are three chains of supermarkets in West Crete:
INKA
They were probably the first supermarkets in the Chania district. When possible
they offer products of local origin. Often a little understaffed and chaotic.
Champion - Marinopoulos
A relative newcomer to Crete, Marinopoulos is Athens based, owned by Prisunic.
Some own-brand products are really cheap. On the minus side, many products
that could be acquired locally are imported from the mainland.
Less common, Halkiadakis (Spar) offers
more or less the same range as the two above + some of their own
brand products.
Apart from these big ones, there are a number of single place supermarkets,
large and small. There are also of smaller supermarkets in tourist
areas (especially on the North coast west of Chania) operating during
the tourist season. These last are a little more expensive, but only
a little. They often keep longer hours and may be open on Sunday.
You can find almost anything you need in supermarkets although the
availability of foreign products varies quite a lot. Most of the
foreign products not used by the Cretans are quite a bit more expensive
than in their countries of origin.
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