TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands If you could provision anywhere .... (on Tortola)

If location were no deterrent, where would you provision in person for fruits, vegetables, meats, wine etc?
We're staying 2 nights pre-charter at Scrub and will need to taxi from Scrub to Nanny Cay for our sleep aboard. We could stop anywhere along the way to pick up our fresh stuff (having water, paper products, etc. pre-ordered & delivered to the boat). Our experience with the big Riteway has been less than stellar the last two trips (March & Nov 2015) - basically cleaned out on a Saturday night.
Any suggestions?

Julie

Well....I was going suggest Riteway...not sure of anywhere else between Scrub and Nanny Cay that would offer their selection of produce and meat - we've never had a bad experience with them...

We definitely like Riteway. It's as good as any grocery in the U.S. but they're at the mercy of their deliveries. They receive 2 containers of inventory each week that hit the shelves on Monday & Thursday.

Any chance the farmer's market is operating? A boat provisioning near us last time claimed they got really good stuff there.... The Farmers' Market (located just above Wickham's Cay at the round-a-bout), is open on Saturdays with locally grown farm products. Source...http://www.b-v-i.com/roadtown.htm

Or... http://goodmoonfarm.com/

"basically cleaned out on a Saturday night.
Any suggestions? "

With the number of charters that start on Saturday, there is the problem. Between the local population doing their shopping and the charters, not going to be much of a selection on a Saturday night (or Sunday either).

Riteway is our first choice and on our last trip we shopped there on Saturday January 16th. Only thing I noticed they were low on was yogurt and even though my wife was disappointed at the lack of yogurt, I wasn't bothered a bit.
Our cab driver told us that the weekend after the 15th and 30th are the busiest because BVI government paychecks are issued on the 15th and 30th.

We found that we receive fresher fruits, veggies, etc, if we order that at the same time that we order our other items. I think they pull all of the fresh items for provisioning orders and puts what is left in the store.

I'll second Good Moon Farm. We've gotten all kinds of local fruit, some were first time experiences for us. Wax apples and plum roses were a hit. Hog plums, not so much. We get genip, tamarind, mango and papaya when they are in season.

Cheers, RickG

Good Moon Farm is great, but seriously, you're gonna be in a rush...so just go to Riteway. It will equal your own supermarket, and if by chance they happen to be out of something...you can make some quality substitutions.

It ain't like the old days, when finding brown lettuce was a score!

You can find more along the way. Many options are available.

We had Good Moon Farm deliver to the boat last May.
They had great fresh baked breads and vegetables and delivered at the requested time.

Thanks everyone! Seems like the Saturday night shopping is the big culprit.
Colleen, I think you may be right about pulling provisioning orders. I'm just going to order the whole thing from Riteway and see what shows up at the boat! We'll have time Sunday morning to find missing things if we need to since we can't get off the dock before Noon.

Has anyone ever provisioned with Bobbys? Appears to be cheaper than Riteway.

Send your order in and see what the actual prices come back at.

Is there any reason to choose one over the other if the prices are similar or is this like Coke vs Pepsi?

I actually did a comparison of Bobbys and Riteway. Some things are significantly cheaper at one store or the other.

Take the excel spreadsheet Bobbys provides and add columns for Riteway...and Tico's. You'll be surprised that Tico's isn't cheaper all the time.

We had a combination of provisioning between Bobbys and Riteway for our trip in January. Savings was about $100. That savings may not be worth the time to some people. I was interested in the exercise.

....looking into this for sure and would love to go visit the farm on our car rental adventure time....anyone have experience ? <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Grin.gif" alt="" />

We just provisioned at Cash & Carry (right beside Riteway) and Riteway this afternoon around 12:30pm and they had a great selection of everything. We actually found Red Peppers on sale for cheaper than at home...unreal!