What does “hacer el mandado” mean in Mexico?

In Mexico, hacer el mandado means to do the grocery shopping or run the errands. El mandado is the food and goods you go out to buy — your weekly shop. It comes from mandar (to send or order): originally the things someone was “sent” to fetch. So mi mandado is “my shopping,” and voy a hacer el mandado is “I’m going to do the groceries.”

The clip follows a British woman shopping at a Mexican street market: eso es lo que no puede faltar en mi mandado — “that’s what can’t be missing from my shopping.” In much of South America and Spain people instead say hacer la compra or ir de compras. Related: a mandadero is an errand-runner, and mandados in the plural means “errands.”