Lettuce meet again: Singles shop for love by adding these secret-coded foods to their grocery carts

Gen Z’s quest for the perfect meet-cute has led them to the most banal setting of all: the grocery store.

Singles in Spain are lining up at Mercadona stores, a popular chain of supermarkets, to pick up a few items in hopes of cooking up some organic romance.

Fed up with the tireless online dating scene, young adults looking for love are increasingly are taking their search for love at first sight off the apps and out onto the streets — just like in the movies.

“That doesn’t happen on apps,” Lidia Izquierdo, 19, told the New York Times last week. The student from Barcelona has recently visited her neighborhood Mercadona three times to increase her chances of running into her soulmate after seeing the speed-shopping dating approach go viral on TikTok.

They’re not leaving it all up to chance. Perhaps borrowing from swinger culture, the pineapple has been pegged as the appropriate signal to other singles that you’re there not just for groceries, but also to mingle.

Those ready to make their approach are advised to playfully bump carts with the shopper they’ve set their eyes on.

The pineapple must be turned upside-down, and canned won’t do, as Izquierdo found on on her second attempt when the fresh fruit was sold out due to the dating craze. On her third try, a store worker was guarding the pineapple stand.

Despite her unlucky attempts, Izquierdo told the Times she planned to return.

Per Spanish media, the trend was popularized by comedian Vivy Lin who reportedly first observed “the dating hour at Mercadona” after noting the multitudes of seemingly single men and women who fill the aisles daily between between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m.

Soon after videos of dolled-up and hopeful singles shoving their shopping carts through crowded stores were populating Spanish social media.

Pineapples are only the first sign of singlehood. US-based Spanish influencer Ana Gildersleeve explained the rules of engagement to her 915,000 viewers on TikTok. She noted that those looking for a longterm relationship should pick up a bag of lentils, “because [they] last forever in your pantry, while those looking for a hook-up can pick up lettuce for a good, short-term time.

The novel dating method has caused chaos at some Mercadona locations, such as in Bilbao where the police had to be called to quell the romantic raucuous, according to a recent BBC report.