SPAR
Store Information:
Official Name: SPAR Szupermarket
Address: Budapest Damjanich utca 13 1071
Store Design: Full-size; not an “Express” store.
We have something very different today. Most of my posts so far have been on Floridian stores (with the exception of Ingles), but today we’ll be traveling all the way to Magyarország (which is better known as Hungary [in America]). SPAR is one of the main supermarket chains in Hungary. Their stores are standard-sized (for Hungary, at least. You could fit three or four of these in a Publix), basic supermarkets, with nothing fancy in them (similar to our ALDIs). SPAR held the Largest Fruit Salad world record for a while, but, sadly, they don’t anymore. They also operate smaller “SPAR Express” stores, but the store in this post is one of their standard locations. Also, I didn’t misspell “Szupermarket” under “Official Name.” That’s what they call a supermarket in Hungary.
Let’s start the tour.
SPAR displays produce in the same way Aldi does—everything stays in its box. Strangely, this technique doesn’t carry over to the other departments.
In Hungary, the bread is just out—it’s not bagged. But wait… that isn’t the strangest thing. The strangest thing is how the label is just stuck directly onto the bread. How does it stick? It makes sense, though, since they have no bag to stick it on!
I’ve run out of photographs of the store, so let’s look at some Hungarian coins.
Hungary uses the Hungarian Forint. My 20-, 100-, and 200-forint coins are pictured here. Paper money starts with the five-hundred-forint bill and goes up to twenty thousand. The exchange rate as of 9/29/2026 is 1.00 USD=323.44 HUF.
We’ve now reached the end of my SPAR portfolio. This is the only SPAR I’ve ever photographed, so I made sure to photograph it well (the number of pictures I took here is similar to the amount I take at most Publixes). If you’re ever in Hungary or one of the surrounding countries, I definitely recommend taking some photos of a SPAR.
We’ll now move on to Google Earth aerials.
That’s everything for today. Be sure to come back in two weeks! We’ll be going back to the United States for that post. In the meantime, go have a look at “Do You Speak Inglés?“
Let’s Publix,
Mr. Rejoice Retail
Glorious aerials in a glorious post. What a beautiful place is Budapest! It was particularly interesting to see the difference in food-handling techniques; unwrapped, sticker pasted round loaves (which looked delicious) and unrefrigerated eggs. Loved it.
Thanks for reading! Those unwrapped loaves were quite odd. I saw them everywhere. Even the convenience stores had them!
And thank-you also for the multi-ton fruit salad link. Hard to believe that quantity of highly perishable food made in a swimming pool was actually passed around and eaten!
You’re welcome!
SPAR – and I thought Ingles was exotic! I was not expecting to see Hungarian retail on here!
It seems like European supermarkets skew toward being really tiny (like this one) or really big (the hypermarkets like Carrefour – not sure if those or one of the similar chains are a thing in Hungary). It doesn’t seem like there’s much of an in-between, like a Publix-sized store. It’s pretty rare to see international retail on the various supermarket blogs, so it was fun to see how supermarkets differ in other parts of the world (unwrapped bread in the open with a label right on the crust – that’s very trusting of people to take what they touch!).
I decided to do this post because I realized that, even after almost two years of reading retail blogs, I had never seen a post on a store not in the United States. I thought that, since I was going to Hungary, I could add something different. When I got there, though, I realized that most of the stores I visited had much more security than the stores we have here. Almost every store I went into had security officers walking around and Walmart-style entrance and exit gates. At some of them, you even had to scan your receipt in order to leave the store! I wanted to avoid being asked what I was doing, so I found a store that had less security than usual. This was it.
I have another non-American supermarket photographed too, but it’s not in Hungary, and it’s a brand we have in the U.S. I’ll put that one up soon.
That bread was very odd. It was everywhere, too. I can only think of one store I went to that didn’t have a large selection of baked goods.
Thanks for reading A World Record for Fruit Salad!
WJL (Mr. Rejoice Retail)
That sticker bread is unappetizing.