Trip Highlight: Supermarket Prices in Barrow, Alaska
Maybe this is dorky of me, but I have to admit this was one of my favorite stops in Barrow, Alaska. Not because Barrow doesn’t have interesting things to see, Â but because the prices were surreal!
It stands to reason that living that far north with little competition and supplies only being brought in by plane or boat items would be expensive, but some of the markups are crazy to think about!
Produce prices had a broad range. Baby carrots were only double in price, $7.50 for a 2lb bag, but potatoes were $10+ for a 5lb bag.
I’d heard meat was expensive, but I actually saw chuck steak on sale for $6.49/lb which didn’t seem that bad. Canned foods were not as reasonable.
A twelve pack of Coke was rumored to go for $30, so $19.99 for a 24 pack seemed relatively affordable.
A quart of Haagen-Dazs though…
My favorite, which I didn’t get a picture of (not surprisingly, shoppers weren’t too thrilled I was taking pictures), was Northern Double Roll toilet paper, 6 ct for $39.95!! Who knew normal toilet paper could be  luxury item! If you were as entertained as I was, GotoAK.com has a whole gallery of fun pictures.
The town’s only gas station was selling regular unleaded for $6.80 a gallon, but fortunately the town isn’t that big…(sorry for the blurriness. Picture was taken from moving tour bus)
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Sure makes free luggage allowance a very valuable commodity!
And I bought water and soda at the airport in Anchorage before my flights because I’d heard the $2.50 price tag would be much cheaper than Barrow 🙂
I remember being amused by prices in Japan. There was a melon for $40. I know melons in Japan are a meaningful gift (this was explained, but I forget), but it was just bigger than a softball.
$40 for a melon, eh? I have a friend on Facebook who went to Italy, and he has pictures of “brontosaurus” meat that when you convert kilos to pounds and euros to dollars, it would be about $40 a pound!