I love vacations. Seriously, if I could do vacations all day, every day, well, I probably wouldn’t want that many. But I’d be perfectly happy spending half my time on vacation and the other half recovering from the last vacation and planning the next one. I don’t, however, love paying for vacations and my gluten-free, soy-free, dairy-free, fun-free gut hates trying to manage eating out on vacations. Mix those two together, and I’ve become quite the expert on how to save money and eat cheap on vacation while still managing to keep my diet healthy. It’s a superpower, I know, so I figured I might as well share what we’ve learned from iterating our vacation hack.
How to save money on food while traveling on a road trip or driving to your destination
I don’t do well on airplanes and at hotels without my mattress topper these days, so the vast majority of our trips the past five years have been road trips. But fear not, our friends who fly in the sky. Most of the travel hacks below will work for you, too. Feel free to scroll past what doesn’t apply for your carry on.
Stay at budget hotels with a mini fridge and microwave. Free continental breakfast or happy hour is a plus.
We recently stayed at The Venetian in Las Vegas (before you ask WTF that’s doing in a vacation budgeting article about being cheap, we didn’t pay for the room) and were shocked that they didn’t have a mini fridge or microwave in the room. When I asked if we could please get one, they informed us:
- It would be $40/day to rent a mini fridge (he was out of his mind)
- The only microwaves in the entire resort were in the penthouse suites (so far from reality, he couldn’t even see it in the rearview anymore)
So we ended up having to go to Walmart and buy a cheap microwave and cooler. There’s nothing quite like the sight of your husband carrying a microwave through a casino. Ohhhh, jackpot, baby, look who got lucky at the slots!!!!
Do you know where we didn’t have an issue finding a microwave or mini fridge for our budget friendly meal planning? At the La Quinta or the Eco Lodge hotels we stayed at for the rest of the trip that we paid for. Expensive doesn’t always mean better or more convenient. Sometimes, it just means more expensive.
Check the amenities list when booking your hotel and make sure it comes equipped so you can grocery shop and prep your meals versus having to eat out at restaurants, which is one of the ultimate budget busters.
If your hotel has continental breakfast included, even better! This typically isn’t as healthy as DIY breakfast in the hotel room, but it’s another budget friendly option for eating cheap while on the go, so long as the hotel room itself doesn’t cost a fortune.
While some hotels don’t offer a free breakfast, they may offer a happy hour option instead. While I don’t rank this quite as high for the ROI as you usually can’t make a meal out of the happy hour offerings, this can be a bonus perk that could cut down on lunch and dinner costs if you can use the happy hour to supplement a smaller dinner versus eating a more expensive dinner out.
Just make sure that you aren’t paying a premium for the hotel with the “free” breakfast or happy hour, where the increase in the nightly room charge negates the savings on food offered.
Pack a (mini) rice cooker
This one is so clutch, but not something I thought of when we originally started cooking on the road. We have two different rice cookers: a smaller one and Big Bertha. My smaller one will make about four cups of rice, and it’s perfect for cooking in Airbnbs, cabins, and yes, even hotel rooms.
I’m a little paranoid that the steam will set off the sprinklers in a smaller hotel footprint, so I try to set up the rice cooker near the sink area where steam is expected.
A bag of rice costs a buck or two, but is a great way to restock carbs and energy after a long day of hiking on the trail. Brown rice provides extra fiber and macronutrients versus white rice, if you want to keep it as healthy as possible. Add a tablespoon of olive oil for some healthy fats and for extra calories to replace all the ones you burned scaling mountains or sightseeing around town.
Pro tip: don’t forget to take a serving spoon to scoop it out when it’s done. A sponge, small container of dish soap, and drying towel are also good for clean up. Be kind and don’t use the hotel’s white towels for dishes, especially if you’re cooking with paprika. They might think someone got murder stabbed when housekeeping cleans up, and that’s going to derail the rest of your trip.
Pro tip: skip the hotplate
Our first two rodeos, I bought and packed a two-burner hotplate and some pots to be able to do a full “kitchen” dinner in the hotel room without having to pay a bunch extra for a suite with a kitchenette. This setup was nice in the sense that I could prep fresh chicken versus reheat frozen chicken strips, which cost more per pound, but in the end, we ended up returning both hotplates and sticking with the hotel microwave.
For one, the hot plate was bulky and heavy, which made it a PITA to pack up and lug to each hotel along our road trip adventures. The pots took up a lot of packing space in the duffel too versus a single ceramic plate we could heat frozen chicken strips on.
While I’m all about cheap cheap cheap, here it just wasn’t quite worth the ROI for us.
Example hotel room hot dinner meal options
Before you freak out that you’re going to be spending your entire vacation eating SpaghettiOs out of a can with a spoon, take a deep breath. I promise, you can do cheap and nutritious. Here are a few of our favorite road trip hotel dinners, thanks to our friends the microwave and the rice cooker:
- Frozen chicken, canned carrots, canned green beans, honey mustard, dijon mustard, and olive oil
- Salad and baked potatoes
- Chicken and yellow rice with frozen broccoli and fresh lemon juice
- Chicken, frozen sweet potatoes, and frozen asparagus spears
Don’t forget to pack a can opener, a vegetable peeler, a small knife, and a small cutting board. This small set can help you prep almost any meal. Grab some disposable plates and some reusable plastic camping utensils, and enjoy your ultra non-processed dinner.
Pack a mini personal blender
I can’t eat yogurt full of dairy, cereal full of sugar, or waffles full of gluten (God, I miss hotel waffles), so I bought a personal blender for less than $20 that easily fits in our travel duffel bag so that I can do breakfast smoothies on the road.
Smoothies, especially with frozen fruit, can be a cheap and healthy alternative to frozen breakfast burritos from the grocery store, McDonalds egg McMuffins or hotcakes, or an even more expensive sit-down breakfast. My go-to breakfast smoothie is:
- Half a greenish (less sugar, more starch, so better for you) banana
- 1 cup blueberries
- 2 Tbsp hemp or pumpkin seeds
- 2 Tbsp sunflower butter
- 1 scoop vanilla rice protein powder
- Dash of cinnamon
- Drizzle of honey
This balance of carbs, protein, and fat helps me kick off the day right and provides plenty of energy for hiking all day.
A strawberry banana smoothie is also an excellent choice.
Map out the super Walmarts along the way
Step one of eating cheap on vacation is to avoid restaurants for every meal. Step two is to target where you get your groceries for your meals on wheels.
Stores like Whole Foods, Safeway, and local markets in food deserts can get stupid expensive as well. We always opt for stopping at a Walmart, and we plan it out en route to the hotel. If there isn’t one in the town we’re staying at for the night, such as when we stayed in La Verkin, UT to head to Zion National Park, we map out the Walmart en route and stop on the way. (If you’re coming from Capitol Reef, stop at the one in Cedar City.) This is where the cooler or a lunch box with an ice pack can come in handy.
If it’s too far to make it with perishables and a cooler isn’t practical because you flew in or don’t have the space, you can skip the frozen chicken and opt for canned chicken instead. You should already have a can opener on hand for your canned veggies, so you’ll be good.
Stock up for breakfast and dinner and skip lunch
This is an especially useful tip if you’re going to be on the road or on the trails all day. Pregame with a large breakfast (preferably a free one at the hotel if possible) to help get you through the day. Your body can work through the extra breakfast calories throughout the day, meaning you can skip planning, coordinating, and paying for lunch. You can then also make up for the skipped meal with a larger dinner. If you’re cooking in your hotel room, this can cut down on the logistics of trying to figure out what to do with leftovers. If you’re eating out in a restaurant, entrees these days are usually big enough to also result in leftovers. This way, you eat the full dinner you’re already paying for and don’t waste money on leftovers or lunch!
If you’re doing a lot of hiking or walking and burning calories, you can still recharge with cheap and healthy snacks (see tips for this below) while bypassing expensive dining out lunch options.
Beware of your beverage budget
We mention this in general for cutting down your grocery budget, and it applies when traveling too. Skip the expensive sports drinks like Gatorade that can quickly add up. Opt for that high quality H2O. If the tap water where you’re going is questionable, grab a gallon or two of purified drinking water on your Walmart run. Pack a reusable water bottle so you don’t have to pay for the more expensive 20oz bottles that are bad for the environment.
Skip the sodas too.
After a long day out hiking and sightseeing, water is going to taste just as good as anything else. And if it’s a day when you’re stuck in the car, you don’t want everyone bouncing off the doors and windows from all the sugar and caffeine anyway.
The only exception to this rule we make is coffee. Most hotels have a little mini coffee bar (ironically not the fancy ass four-star hotel mentioned above though). When we were at the Venetian, my husband’s options were 1) don’t get coffee and murder everyone in the hotel or 2) buy $6 coffee in the food court.
Neither of these options appealed to us, so he walked down the Strip to Walgreens and bought some instant coffee. He figured it would be terrible, but it turned out to be just as good as the $6 coffee downstairs. Instant coffee can be clutch if you’re an addict like my husband and either aren’t staying at a place with a continental breakfast where they have coffee or you like to get up and hit the road early like we often do before the coffee is out for the taking.
Avoid the junk food and skip the snacks
This is another duplicate from our general guidelines on how to cut down your grocery budget. Skip the snack aisle full of empty calories. You don’t need Starbursts for the same reason you don’t need soda: you’ll either be bouncing against the seatbelt with pent up energy or all the sugar will make you nauseous after being out exercising in the sun all day.
You also don’t need the uber expensive jerky, even though it’s a wonderful road trip snack. There are much cheaper options. We like to target high protein and high energy snacks instead. We buy our trail friendly applesauce packs and protein bars from Costco before we hit the road.
Side bar: Chase a squirrel over to if memberships to warehouse clubs are worth it if you’re curious. (Spoiler alert, a lot of times, they actually are, much to our surprise.)
Other snacks we pick up at Walmart include:
- Bananas
- Apples
- Rice cakes
- Peanut butter or other nut butter
- Bread and jelly for sandwiches
Pro tip: pack a few plastic sandwich bags for your trip so you can make sandwiches and you have something to keep your fruit peels and cores in while out on the trail or in the car until you reach your next destination.
When eating out, skip the sit down service
If you don’t have to prep pretty much every meal from scratch like me, you likely won’t want to have to plan and prep every meal of your vacation. And given that it’s a vacation, you should leave at least some room in the vacation’s budget for some eating out.
While dining out is almost always going to be more expensive than cooking, you can limit the damage but selecting restaurants wisely. Skip the fancy steakhouses, sushi, and hibachi joints, and opt for cheaper options. This isn’t to say you should get every meal you eat out on vacation at McDonalds or other similar ultra-processed fast food places. We did this on our first Las Vegas trip when we were dating and let me tell you, Montezuma’s revenge is not fun to juggle on a three hour road trip to the Grand Canyon.
Aim for $$ restaurants versus $$$ or $$$$ restaurants. And definitely avoid anything with $$$$$. You don’t even need to check out the reviews, it’s not an option if you’re trying to eat cheap. This will not only save you money but time as well. Use that extra time for more exploring! I always like to opt for quick hotel dinners so we can see what else is local that we might want to explore that wasn’t on our original itinerary. We ended up crawling into a lava tube on our last trip using this hack!
The final word
When it comes to eating cheap on vacation or other travel, the key is intentionality. It’s so easy to pull off at the next exit and follow the blue highway signs to the closest restaurant because you’re hangry. Channel your inner Boy Scout and always be prepared for this situation. Have the bread, peanut butter, jelly, plate, and knife in a snack bag with the apples and bananas for the day. Keep that up front where the shotgun seat can funnel food over to the driver. I’ve made PB&Js on the go across a quarter of the states in our fine country.
While you don’t want to load up on more food than you’ll ever eat (this doesn’t end up saving you any money), having a plan for what’s up for breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinner can prevent detours into Burger King and convenience stores while you fill up gas. These purchases are the ones that can hit you where it hurts while on the road.
If you have a favorite travel hack to save money on food, let us know in the comments! We’re always looking for new ideas.
If you’re looking for additional ideas on how to save money on vacation, also check out how to road trip on a budget and our favorite staycation ideas for a fun but cheap vacation at home. You can also always reach out in our budgeting and personal finance Facebook group for personalized advice. Our brigadiers help shape articles and advice such as what’s included above.