Grocery Shopping

While Montreal is filled with interesting and fun restaurants, most people don’t eat out every night, and many love to cook for themselves. The city has the usual supermarkets and grocery stores that you might find in other parts of Canada, but there are also some uniquely Quebecois aspects to food shopping in Montreal. Let’s take a look at both cases.

What is a depanneur?

One of the commonly used terms that seems to most often confuse visitors to Montreal is “depanneur“. Quite simply, a depanneur is another word for corner store, or convenience store. In Montreal, some of the larger depanneur chains are Boni-Choix and Couche-Tard, (which roughly translates into ‘open late). Called ‘deps’ for short, depanneurs are usually open late, and some are 24 hours. Depanneur can also be privately owned or attached to gas stations. Many of the 24 hour depanneurs are associated with a gas chain.

At a dep you typically won’t find any fresh produce or meats, but you can usually select from a wide range of beverages, beer and wine (until 11 pm), canned goods, crackers, cookies and other snack food. Some depanneurs will have frozen foods mixed in with their ice cream and popsicles. Few people do any serious grocery shopping at a depanneur, but they can be very useful if you get the late night munchies or just want to pick up a few things for a party.

Montreal grocery stores

Montreal is home to a few local grocery store chains. Esposito started in the Notre-Dame-De-Grace neighborhood and branched out to include 2 other locations around the island. In fact, the original Esposito is still standing and was the first building in NDG to have automatic-opening doors. Unfortunately, the glory of this location has faded over the years and it now has a rundown feel.

Metro is another, larger chain based in Montreal. The second largest grocer in Quebec, Metro had the good fortune to purchase almost half of Steinberg’s store locations when that giant chain fell into insolvency in the early 90’s. This has positioned them well in the market. Metro also runs Super C, a discount grocer that makes up a smaller portion of the over 570 Metros in Quebec and Ontario.

A few of the familiar national supermarket chains have enjoyed great success in Montreal, such as Loblaws, who have a smaller presence under that name but enjoy much greater market penetration with the Provigo line of stores. Loblaws purchased Provigo in 1998 and used then as their toehold in Quebec. Together with Maxi, Provigo and Loblaws are the largest food distributor in Canada, just edging out Metro. Other players have entered the Montreal scene as well, such as bulk-food seller Costco.

While not quite as overwhelming as their American counterparts, these major supermarkets in Montreal will be more than adequate when it comes to filling whatever grocery list you might need to fill. If you can’t find what you are looking for at a supermarket, feel free to visit the open markets at Jean Talon and Atwater to track down some of the more seasonal or exotic ingredients that you need.