More than a good deal: the rise of supermarket socialising

An Instagram video shows a young woman getting ready to leave her apartment. The caption lists discount supermarkets – A101, BİM, Şok – as “places to socialise”.

“Our daily activities,” one comment says.

As discount supermarkets have spread rapidly across Turkey in recent years – as of 2025, according to last year’s Retail Report there are over 42,000 such stores, a rise of over 200% in a decade – they’ve taken on a surprising new function.

With a discount store in almost every neighbourhood, many women are visiting them to meet friends as well as to pick up deals. Soaring food inflation amid Turkey’s economic crisis has prompted the spread of these shops, which sell everything from food to kitchen utensils, electronics and clothing at below-market prices. But for poorer women in Turkey, they’re playing a deeper social role as well.

Nerime Altınten, a 67-year-old housewife who lives in Istanbul’s Zeytinburnu district, says her biggest pleasure is looking for bargains in discount stores and street markets. She closely monitors current deals and has bought three TVs for herself and her children in the last year. Kitchen appliances are her special area of interest.

“My children are married. I always find deals for my daughter or daughter in law. Containers, pots, pans, glasses, you get all kinds of stuff in the store. I buy some for my granddaughters too, they can put it in their dowry package for when they get married,” she says.

Her 25-year-old granddaughter interjects, asking “What am I supposed to do with these, grandma?”

“It’s okay, I’ll buy them anyway,” Altınten says. “She says she doesn’t want these things now, but she’ll be happy to have them when she’s getting married.”

Getting out of the house

The American sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined the term “third place” for the social spaces people use outside of work and the home – cafes and bars, for instance. But when money is tight, the options become more limited.

Altınten visits the discount stores at least once every day, either by herself or with her neighbour – who gives her name as “Ms. Veliye” – and considers them a “place to pass the time”.

“We see what’s new in store, we talk about those,” she says. “It’s sight-seeing even if we don’t end up buying anything.”

There is a mall near their neighborhood, but they find walking around it a bit tiring, say the two women. They go to the park when the weather allows, but they still drop into the supermarket on their way back.

Veliye considers supermarket deals an excuse to get outside and regularly sets up dates with her neighbor to visit a few stores.

“It’s even better if we’re looking for something specific,” Veliye says. “We can go to more stores until we find what we need. It makes you happy if you find it.”

Most recently, she was thrilled to find a barista cup made by a particular cafe chain, which her granddaughter wanted.

“It’s normally really expensive, so I jumped on it when I saw it at the discount store. She was so happy to receive it, it made me happy,” she says.

Additional benefits

Economist Serap Durusoy, who focuses on economic violence against women, says that it would be wrong to see cheap deals as the only reason for women’s enthusiasm for the supermarkets.

“These shopping trips can provide excuses for women to escape the patriarchal system and housebound status of their lives,” Durusoy says, adding that the practice also contains meanings beyond efforts to open up an individual space for women.

40-year-old Nilgün Mollalar runs a small clothing shop in her neighborhood. She says that she keeps up with discount deals and will wait outside the supermarket in the mornings to go in with the first customers when it opens. “Boredom and a lack of personal time” are her primary motivations, she says. Keeping up on bargain deals is her way of decompressing.

“I will ask a friend to watch my shop for an hour or I’ll close up to go around the supermarket,” she says. “There are no parks nearby, no trails to walk on. So, I go to the shops. I usually look at clothes, jewelry or stationery. I find some really unexpected items.”

Housewife Nagihan Deveci says she prefers going to the store as a pastime because it’s convenient, since it’s very close to her house.

“I couldn’t leave the house for an outing every day but I could go to the supermarket three times a day if I wanted to, nobody would object,” she says. “My husband wouldn’t mind. He would restrict it if I were going somewhere else, saying I was spending too much money. But these stores aren’t like that.”

Going to the store provides Deveci with an opportunity to not just take care of the house needs, but also to take her mind off things.

“Most times, I go just to leave the house. I walk around, I don’t buy anything, but I pass the time,” she says.

A space of their own

A key moment in supermarket socialising is when women gather to show each other what they’ve bought, or to swap tips. Altınten says she keeps track of deals by following the shops’ social media accounts and watching adverts on her smart TV – which, in fact, she bought in one of these deals.

“Say I see that they will be getting deals on plates. I’ll let my daughter, my daughter in law or my neighbour know. Me and my neighbour set up a date to go early in the morning. After the shopping trip, we’ll go over to my house or hers, put on a kettle of tea. We go over what we bought and chat. I send pictures of the products to my daughters. We discuss it with them too,” she says.

Mollalar also enjoys telling her friends and customers about her bargain finds.

“I make small talk by telling them about my finds, tell them they can get designer goods for cheaper. Everyone enjoys it and asks me how much I paid. I tell them ‘get them before they’re gone!’ That’s the social aspect of it,” she says.

Economist Durusoy sees supermarket socialising as a symptom of straitened circumstances – but one that affords women a degree of freedom nonetheless.

“Men often put women in charge of the household budget’s management to avoid facing the fact that their income is insufficient,” she says. But the fact that trips to the supermarket are about more than “shopping habits” shows how, for some women, it’s also about finding a space of their own.

“All the checkout staff know me,” Altınten says with some pride. “They’ll let me know if there are any good deals coming up each week. I tell them to put some of them aside for me; they can’t always do it but sometimes they do.”

At Altınten’s local supermarket, the checkout staff says they need clearance from their managers to talk to Inside Turkey. However, their manager doesn’t allow us to interview them.

“There is a lot to say but it’s not allowed,” one of the staff members says.