The Nunavut grocery experience

I've mentioned this before. It's worth discussing again. Iqaluit's main grocery stores, at first glance, are typical of North American stores, if not a bit smaller than average. The selection is good, perhaps better than you would expect for a store so far North. It's very rarely difficult to find something, as long as you aren't too picky about which type of apple or brand of bread you buy. Northmart even carries some Costco brand items for people who want to buy in large quantities. Even amid a pandemic, there is no shortage of any product. Toilet paper, household disinfectants, and hand sanitizer are plentiful. 

In fact, the only major difference between grocery stores here and their southern counterparts is the price of items. It's not as shocking of a difference as I was led to believe when I moved, but it is certainly noticeable. 

Today I did some general grocery shopping and purchased these items:

- a 1.36 Kg bag of oranges

- a box of 40 garbage bags

- 1 kg of peanut butter

- a loaf of bread (which was 50% off)

- a block of butter

- 400 g of cheese

- 454 g of celery

I sent my mom this photo and asked her to guess the price I had paid. She guessed $30. The actual price? $52.14.

The most expensive items were the peanut butter (9.99), and the garbage bags (12.99), but the other items were still significantly more costly than they would have been outside of Nunavut. The butter, cheese, and oranges each cost about $7, the celery cost $6, and the bread at 50% off cost $2.24. 

The price jump is understandable, to an extent. I don't know the specifics, but it's expensive to ship grocery stores full of food and supplies this far north, and we can't grow our own food (some people have grown some food items, but not very successfully, and not in great quantity). Some of the high cost could also be due to lack of competition- Northmart and Ventures are competitors, but there are few outside companies to drive down costs, and some could be the result of staff turnover and higher than average wages, at least for managers and supervisors. 

So I am grateful for the variety and freshness of the food that I can purchase here, and I try not to think too hard about what more my money could purchase down south. 

- Aliya