Why Mercadona's Success Faces Growing Backlash

Mercadona fills its aisles, but convinces fewer people every day

How can a chain that has been reducing its assortment, leaving almost no room for manufacturer brands, and concentrating almost everything on its own label continue to fill its aisles? The question is not new, but discontent has ceased to be an anomaly. What was once the reference supermarket in Spain is now perceived as a narrow format: one product per need, almost all private label, and a basket that is no longer the cheapest. The underlying thesis is simple: if seeing one means seeing them all, something has been lost along the way. What was once a distinctive supermarket is now, for some voices, seen as worse than many DIA stores, with rising prices, shrinking variety, and the feeling that the green brand obscures scarcity.

What is Mercadona criticized for today

The catalog of complaints is long and very specific. Fruit and vegetables mostly imported from outside Spain, canned goods also arriving from abroad, non-existent butcher counters, and charcuterie reduced to a few whole hams. The fish counter, for many the only decent thing left, is being converted toward packaged products. Meat receives blunt criticism, with the example of liver fillets that, it is claimed, were not fit even for cats.

Variety is another major reproach. The comparison is made on the street: while an Eroski accumulates four shelves just for wine, at Mercadona the assortment is limited to a couple of references per product. Those who shop with intolerances or seek specific items notice it immediately. And those who want something other than the house brand are left without options. The result, according to the harshest voices, is that the aisle has become a closed catalog that admits no rebuttal.

Why does Mercadona sell almost no manufacturer brands?

Because its entire model is built on a single brand. The strategy concentrates the assortment on its own label—Hacendado, Bosque Verde, Deliplus—and leaves external brands as a more expensive exception than any competitor. Here lies the key: if the private label covers the need, the margin stays in-house; and if the customer ends up buying the manufacturer's brand, the inflated price also plays in favor of the chain.

The other pillar is not visible from the checkout line. A recurring argument is that of pressure on suppliers: strict conditions and a payment policy that, according to this reading, turns suppliers into free financiers for the group. Logistics are reinforced with an ordering system without large intermediate warehouses, an element that lowers costs and explains, as pointed out in the debate, why the format works equally well at the opposite end of Spain.

Is Hacendado quality as good as its defenders claim?

It depends on who you ask, and that is the core of the clash. Some maintain that it is the only place where you can buy blind, with reliable industrial product and fresh goods under correct conditions, while others respond that the green label has been lowering quality while raising prices. The tug-of-war over fruit is the most fierce: some voices describe it as a true postcard, others as expensive, scarce, and often past its prime.

Among the anecdotes that surface is one that summarizes the emotional bond with certain details: the film cutter at the checkout, valued above competitors, or mushroom cream and unsalted potatoes, which are not easily found on other aisles. The devil is in the details, and the chain has been exploiting them for years.

Public recognition and labor face

It is not all about merchandise. Some attribute the success to what you see upon entering: order, light, cleanliness, and a sense of control that other stores do not offer. A staff with salaries above the sector average is also mentioned, which generates internal loyalty and some external discomfort.

The other side is in the courts. A judicial ruling upheld a sanction against Mercadona for workplace harassment in a store in Aljaraque (Huelva), trinc the labor inspection report issued after the case of an employee. The episode does not dismantle the brand narrative, but it cracks it. Those who worked as external security in its stores describe it as a demanding company without sectarian quirks, harder on staff than on the label.

From aspirational supermarket to crisis format

The sociological reading has its own space. The phenomenon is compared to Zara: simple food for those who cannot afford anything else, packaged so no one feels poor when leaving. When the wallet tightens, this format gains weight and displaces neighborhood commerce, which cannot compete with a basket sustained at a loss until closing on the neighbor.

Nor are there those who see in the advertising campaign itself the symptom of the change in audience: festive slogans, scenes of encounter, and a tone that has become a meme. What was once read as a better-presented neighborhood store is now interpreted as a closed community, with its liturgy, its colors, and its loyalists. The supermarket war has become, literally, a matter of faith.

With these threads, a client exodus would be logical. And yet, it continues to bustle. Perhaps the problem is not Mercadona: perhaps the problem is that there is not much else to go to.