Twenty years is a long time to run a business with anyone. It’s an especially long time to run one with your ex.
Pedro and Ana opened Mercearia Bio in Lagos as a couple, back when Ana was still a bank manager and organic groceries were a hard sell in the Algarve. Nineteen years later, they’ve raised two kids together, divorced more than a decade ago, weathered a few rocky patches, and kept right on running the business side by side – heading toward the shop’s 20th anniversary in 2027.
“The secret is you focus on your kids,” Pedro Gonçalves tells me. “They’re the most important thing you have.” Beyond that, it’s practical: they split responsibilities cleanly. Ana António handles the finances, he runs the online store. Pedro says they argue, like any partners do, but neither one puts personal interests ahead of the team’s.
And the team has grown alongside them, six full-time employees, with a seventh on the way … plus part-timers who rotate through the week. Their oldest son worked the counter part-time for two years before heading off to university. It has the texture of an actual family operation, the kind no big chain could fake.
That same instinct – take care of what’s around you, waste nothing, keep it small enough to steer – shows up everywhere in how the shop operates, not just in how the founders get along. Zero waste has been baked in since the beginning: produce that’s a day past its prime becomes soup or juice in the cafe instead of getting tossed out. Detergent-free wastewater gets reused to water plants. For over a year, Mercearia Bio has taken part in a Lagos City Council pilot programme that collects and separates all of the shop’s organic waste, with composting to follow. For seven years running, Mercearia Bio has won the Green Key award, a worldwide sustainability recognition.
Even the growing pains are sustainability-minded. A recent renovation added air conditioning, keeping produce fresher and, happily, finally letting chocolate survive the summer on the shelf. Old furniture rescued from a neighbouring dumpster furnishes the coffee shop. They’ve started testing a secondhand clothing rack. Reduce, reuse, recycle isn’t a slogan here, it’s the operating manual.
Pedro is candid that Portugal’s organic market itself isn’t exactly booming. He estimates it’s still under 1% of national food sales, compared to roughly 10% in Germany. But Mercearia Bio has kept growing anyway, on the strength of loyal, repeat customers who trust that the prices are fair even when they’re not cheap. “If we buy cheap, we sell cheap. If we buy expensive, we sell expensive,” Pedro says. “Our margin stays the same either way.”
It’s a rare kind of consistency: two people who divorced but never stopped agreeing on what an honest business and a better world should look like.
Organic, Delivered Anywhere in Portugal
You don’t have to live in the Algarve to shop Mercearia Bio’s shelves. Their online store ships refrigerated organic groceries nationwide within 24 hours. And somewhat surprisingly, their single biggest source of online orders isn’t local at all. It’s Lisbon, several hours north.
A Delicious Way to Spend an Afternoon
Mercearia Bio’s newest offering, the Grocery-to-Table Experience, transforms a trip to the store into a sumptuous gourmet meal. Guests sip beverages, help plan a seasonal, zero-waste menu, shop for groceries together, then cook it side by side with a private chef before sitting down to eat what they made — paired with an organic wine or fresh juice. Sessions run on Friday lunchtime 11 am-2 pm, with a capacity of six guests.
