Disclaimer! What follows are my opinions based on living in Nevis for 2 years and 9 months. Others will have different opinions and experiences.
Grocery shopping is not glamorous but it is sure necessary! The first time you shop for food on Nevis the prices will give you sticker shock. St. Kitts and Nevis uses Eastern Caribbean currency which exchange with the US dollar 2.7 to 1. So that $5 package of cookies is $13.50 EC. Once you get over the shell shock of paying over $13 for cookies, do the rounding math. Multiply the EC price by 0.4 to get the US equivalent. Round up or down to an easy amount, double it, double again and divide by 10. You get used to it.
Nevis has 4 stores: Horsfords Valumart IGA, Rams, and two locations of Best Buy. Many smaller stores carry some food items, for example a gas station on the north-eastern side of the island has bakery, some produce, staples. There are also many small fruit stands and a farmers’ market in Charlestown.
All the stores have the same fundamental constraint that almost all food is imported other than locally-raised meat, some vegetables and fruit. Nevis imports mostly from the US and UK, with some items from other islands, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Peru, New Zealand and Australia. We are limited to what is on the boats and the shipments arrive only a couple times a week.
Dave went shopping this week to Rams and IGA.
Horsfords Valumart IGA Grocery Trip July 25, 2024
This store is convenient, right off the main island road round about at the intersection with the bypass road. It is the closest in style to an American grocery store with good lighting, wide isles, well-stocked shelves (usually).
We buy our cat litter and cat food here most of the time, plus baking supplies, canned goods, toiletries and cleaning products. He avoids buying produce there except for the excellent local lettuce while bakery and meat vary in availability and quality.
Today Dave got 2 20 pound boxes of Arm and Hammer clumping cat litter. Back in Michigan I bought the Walmart cheapo brand for about $13 for I think 35 pounds. It’s a lot more here! The boxes were $47.09 each, about $17 US. So much much more. On the other hand the cats use it and it’s worth it to have a house that doesn’t smell or have cat messes on the floor.
You’ll see most of the items he purchased are the same as or slightly more than in the US.
| Item Purchased | EC Price | US Dollar Price |
| Progresso Soup | $11.99 | $4.44 |
| US Frozen Chicken Breasts with Skin and Bone | $8.99/pound | $3.32 per pound |
| 10.3 Ounce Can Essentials Columbian Ground Coffee | $21.99 | $8.00 |
| 1 Dozen Eggs | $12.00 | $4.44 |
| Seedless Small Red Grapes | $11.00 per pound | $4.00 per pound |
| Island Grown Leaf Lettuce, big bag | $15.00 | $5.55 |
| 12 Ounce Store Brand Cereals | $10.00 | $3.70 |
| 8 Ounces Cracker Barrel Cheddar Cheese | $19.50 | $7.22 |
| 11.2 Ounce Package Keebler Pecan Sandies | $15.99 | $5.93 |
| White Sugar | $2.25 per pound | $0.83 per pound |
Essentials brand Columbian coffee is good, not great, roughly equivalent to McCafe Columbian. Sometimes stores here have some excellent coffee from Antigua which is roughly triple the price for Essentials.
Eggs here are very good, fresh and local, usually mixture of white and brown and large. The island-grown leaf lettuce is $15 EC and excellent, a mix of red and green leaf lettuce usually. They grow it hydroponically so it is clean, requires little washing, and comes in a large ziplock type plastic bag, probably 1-2 pounds.
Dairy tends to be high compared to US. He didn’t get any milk today but it’s usually about $12to $15 EC for a half gallon. It’s interesting that the lactose-free stuff tends to be the same or sometimes even less than the regular milk. Plus we can sometimes get lactose free cheese.
Buy It When You See It
With nearly everything imported, residents quickly get in the habit of buying what they like when they see it, even if they don’t need it. For example, Dave likes the Wickles brand pickle relish which was hard to find in Kalamazoo, but they have had it here several times. He doesn’t strip the shelves, but if the store has several and he’ll go through it before the expiry date then he will buy 2.
The most popular US-branded cookies such as Oreos are usually available although if you want specialty varieties like lemon Oreos then you better buy when you see them because they are stocked sporadically.
Food Quality and Preferences
The farmers here raise chickens, goats, sheep and some pigs and cattle. We don’t care for local beef and look for USDA marked imports. The beef cuts are different too.
Sugar and flour are very different. The humidity ruins sugar quickly as we learned when several bags turned to stone. Even if you vacuum seal the bags it will hydrate once open even in a lidded cannister. We save the little packets of desiccant that come in some shipments and put the packets in with loose salt and we tried that with sugar. Unfortunately the packets in the sugar leaked which we found out when we noticed a cake was crunchy. Oops. We tossed that sugar and the cake!
Now we buy sugar in plastic bags and store like that in the cannisters. For salt I open the 1 pound box, dump in a ziplock bag and add a packet. That seems to work great for salt.
Flour comes either in 2 KG bags, 4.4 pounds, or in plastic bags like the sugar. I’ve tried several types to make bread and so far haven’t found one that is super reliable. The best is milled here in the Caribbean but I find the bread tends to fall after raising sometimes.
Brands from US and England
You saw the Progresso soups and Keebler crackers and Arm & Hammer cat litter. We can buy many US brands here although they may not have the exact style one prefers. For example, Dave likes reduced fat Miracle Whip and the stores here seldom have it, usually only the regular style and in larger containers than we prefer.
Snack foods vary all over. We can get Rolled Gold pretzels, Fritos, Tostitos and some smaller packages of potato chips. However the chips and such come in small bags and tend to be pricey. Dave also found that it is often worth it to buy the name brand depending on the packaging. Those umpteen-layers in the Tostitos bag keep the product fresh while the simpler packaging on some local brands doesn’t work as well.
If we can Dave always buys cookies or crackers that come in smaller packets. We have had a very bad time with crackers, whether saltines, grahams or Town House type, they tend to be stale when we open the package or very soon after.
Planters peanuts, Peter Pan peanut butter, Land o’ Lakes soft butter, and so on are readily available and often on sale. US-branded toiletries and cleaners are easy to find.
When it comes to jams and frozen chicken patties the stores here have some excellent English brands. I made jam and jelly for years and we got rather spoiled with the good tastes so we were delighted to find Waitrose and similar brands. (I also enjoyed seeing brands that many books set in England mention.)
Other Things
All three of the major stores offer frequent shopper programs with points you can redeem as money off your bill. They almost always man all or most checkout lanes with 2 people, a checker and a bagger. The employees are helpful. Stores accept Eastern Caribbean currency, US dollars, checks and credit cards. I do not know whether they accept Canadian dollars or British pounds.
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