It seems they mean grocery store, rather than supermarket. Also take into account that in the Netherlands it's more common to go grocery shopping daily or every few days.
Is it more common to go daily because there are so many grocery stores? I'm not in Amsterdam, but Switzerland, where I am, there's supermarkets for every neighbourhood, I took to buying groceries nearly every day because it's so easy to pick them up on the way home, I can just go in and see what's on sale to make dinner.
I'd qualify the most popular chains here (like Albert Hein) as super markets. You can buy not only food, but also all the basic home supplies (cleaning products etc), large choice of drinks and sweets and so on. Basically all you need on daily basis as long as you're not too picky about the brands. But not home _equipment_. In years of living here in few places I've been only going to the store by feet. Indeed it's every few days as apartments are mostly small and you have no space for storing/freezing a lot of food. And there are mice everywhere.
It's probably because they are so close. I would imagine many americans would do the same if their neighbourhood was in walkable distance. I live in Germany and I do the same I go shopping everyday for 10 minutes for the things I need for the day.
In the Netherlands you have supermarkets, some big, some small and sometimes smaller mom and pop stores that sell the basics. They are outcompeted by supermarkets that tend to be very close as well. There are no supermarkets that sell everything, like you might find in France (Hyper Marche, Carrefour) or the US (Walmart).
What is the difference? In Europe we call basically everything a supermarket and its a synonym for grocery store. The only exceptions would be minimarket which are extremely tiny and hypermarket which is your US Walmart-style extremely large store that also sells electronics and clothes etc.
Not exactly true. There’s the notion of a corner store, in different languages. But these things don’t really exist anymore since supermarket chains have taken over, some in really small spaces. Btw, the chain stores are often franchises, so owner operated like in the old days, but with scale, brand and prices of big chains.
> There’s the notion of a corner store, in different languages. But these things don’t really exist anymore since supermarket chains have taken over, some in really small spaces.
They still exist, you just need to know where to find them.
Your corner bakery, butcher & vegetable store are still around, but they tend to serve an upmarket / luxury customer segment these days.
In most big(ger) cities there's "night stores", often run by people of Arab origin (like Lebanese), "toko" (Indonesian grocery store), and Turkish supermarkets (my go-to for dried legumes like lentils, chickpeas, mung beans etc).
Relatively new are organic / "bio" focussed supermarkets. Usually expensive... But they sell many products that regular supermarket chains don't.
> There’s the notion of a corner store, in different languages
The person you're responding to mentioned them as "minimarkets which are really small". They still exist and are very important as a last resort thing, or for exotic stuff.
In France sometimes they're called "arab stores" or something along those lines, because they're often held by people of visibly foreign origin (tbf I've seen more Indian/Pakistani/Sri Lankan/Bangladeshi than Arab-held ones), and are great for emergency shopping on Sunday/late at night when you realise you're missing something, but also for exotic products you wouldn't find in a regular supermarket like exotic spices or even high quantities of rice.
That means "things required for daily life". They definitely mean supermarket. It's about the same in Rotterdam. I'm an eight minute walk away from four different big supermarket chains. If I walk 10 minutes I can get to the second most distant Albert Heijn.