Want details on grocery shopping in Iceland? We went to Bonus — a discount grocery store — on our trip to Iceland. Here’s a little peek into our shopping trip and what the prices were.
You might also like my post: Grocery Shopping in South Africa.
Grocery Shopping in Iceland
One of the things I heard over and over again as I researched how to save money when visiting Iceland was that the price of food was really high. So we prepared accordingly by bringing an entire suitcase of packaged food with us (you get a free checked bag per person when you fly internationally).
This suitcase of packaged food saved us at least $700 to $1000 in food costs while we were in Iceland because we only ate a few meals out (and we went to really inexpensive places). We also booked an apartment instead of a hotel so we could cook our own food.
Shopping at Bonus
On the first day we got there, we walked to Bonus — a discount grocery store in Iceland. I had heard that this was one of the best and cheapest grocery stores to shop at there.
This store was located in a pretty touristy part of Reykjavík and was a smaller store. It kind of reminded me of a mix of Aldi + the Indian grocery stores I went to.
They had a lot of American brands — especially when it came to cereal. And there were a lot of things written in English, too, which made it really helpful when shopping! 🙂
One of the coolest features was that all of the refrigerated items were in a big refrigerated room. (You can see a video of it if you look on my highlights on Instagram stories.)
Were the Prices Really High?
Well, compared to paying for a meal at a restaurant, it was much cheaper to go buy groceries and make your own food. However, compared to what I am used to paying at a discount grocery store (or by combining coupons with sales), most things were at least 2-3 times the price I would typically pay.
Here’s what we ended up buying:
- 1 dozen eggs
- Loaf bread
- Head lettuce
- Bunch of bananas
- 3 bottles of Coke (the kids get to drink soda pop once a week on Saturdays and we were there on a Saturday, so you better believe they bought their Coke! ;))
- 1 large bottle of water (for my sinus rinse)
- 12-pack of bottled water (you can drink the tap water in Iceland, so we bought these to just refill throughout the week)
- 1 carton cream (for my tea)
Our total was 2,997 ISK — which is around $24 USD.
What We’d Do Differently Next Time Around
If you ever head to Iceland, I highly recommend bringing a lot of your own snacks and food. I also would recommend shopping at Bonus.
We brought trail mix, nuts, dried fruit and veggies, granola bars, beef jerky, and some protein bites and bars. So we had toast and eggs and bananas for two of our meals and I made salads with the lettuce and topped with a little trail mix and beef jerky. And we ate a lot of jerky and trail mix and dried fruit for snack-y meals.
If we did it again, we would definitely bring oatmeal packets and a few other types of things that we can add hot water to in order to make hot food. The kids got pretty tired of cold packaged food after two days! 🙂
