I'm trying to get a good idea of how much to budget for meals on Maui. From what I've read the grocery store and restaurant prices are higher than on the mainland. How much higher are they?

Prices are out of the world (skyhigh) for 3 milk!!! 3 As one of our Hawaii bus tour guides was fond of saying "got to go to Kmart (or Walmart) family".

as an example, a regular carton of orange juice (not fresh squeezed, just the tropicana that you get at home) is $5 at the supermarket.

at restaurants, expect to spend $40 for two for breakfast, $50 for lunch, and upwards of $100 for dinner.

you can save money here and there by getting snacks and breakfast foods at the supermarket and keeping it in your room, but even these are expensive.

good luck!
fiasco

As I recall, there was a recent show on the Travel Channel called "$40 a day" for meals in Maui. Perhaps you can check it out.

Oops, $40 a day, is on the Food Network, here is link:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...6/DD283971.DTL

The island also has most of the fastfood restaurants we have here. So if you wanted to save money, go and buy an egg McMuffin or just go to a supermarket and get some bagels or muffins.There is no reason to spend $40 on breakfast if you are on a budget. For lunch we bought a styrofoam cooler and made sandwiches on a few occasions. Great picnics in the mountains and on the beach. dinner can be pricey but there are specials around or the local pizza joint.

I know I am going to catch hell for this one but here goes...
Years ago I won a trip to a fabulous resort in St. Lucia. Problem was, it included air and lodging but not food.
And this resort charged a flat fee of 110 PER PERSON, PER DAY to eat.
So, it was not possible for us to spend more than 2000.00 for a trip, no matter how nice it was or how much it was really worth.
So we packed our stuff in one large suitcase and packed 3 more smaller cases with all the food we needed for the trip. I even took a pitcher for kool aide and iced tea. It worked and we had a great time.
We do not drink alcohol... so we saved a chunk there, too!
One the way back, we nested the suitcases and only had 2 to check.
Taking food from home is nothing to be ashamed of...
Oh, and in addition to the tropical tan, I LOST weight on my VC.

We shopped for groceries at Safeway in Cannery mall and took advantage of the specials they offered. It has a bakery that we bought bagels for about the same price as home. Milk was $5 a gallon and yogurt $1.89 a container. It was still cheaper than eating in a a restaurant every meal. We splurged on dinner every night with entrees about $22 each. You can eat cheaper but your on vacation. Enjoy the fabulous fresh fish. If you haven't bought the book Maui Revealed I highly recommend it. It has some great ideas and prices of restaurants on the island.
As far as carrying food in your luggage, it may be difficult with the new security regulations. I understand certain things set off the detectors. Of course if you don't mind having your luggage searched.....

Don't worry about checking food.
It is not a problem at all...
Just don't try to take those flame heating thingees, Sterno.

Food is definitely more expensive in the stores there than on the ML (however, alcohol was the same if not cheaper!). Eggs for around $3/dz, Trop Pure Premium was like $6 for a 96oz jug. But like it was mentioned, the stores have specials that bring some prices down.

You definetely don't need to spend $200 a day on food if you don't want to. It all depends on how much you want to spend. While in Hawaii earlier this year, I budgeted $200 a day total for food and activities for 2 people... and we didn't end up spending that much.

On sale, OJ and milk can be as low as $1.99 for a 1/2 gallon. Aside from grocery shopping, the plate lunch places are always good and cheap. I like Pik-Niks in Paia. In fact, there are quite a few reasonable places in Kahului, Kula, Paia and Makawao, which you will encounter while touring around. You will most likely stay in Kaanapali, which can be expensive, but I remember going to a couple of plate lunch places there that were OK!

Da Kine Kitchen has very good plate lunches/dinners for $5.00-7.00 or less. Maui Tacos is also very reasonable. Mind you, these places are just above fast food. You have to order at the counter, then take your food to a table just like McDonald's, but you'll get better food and plenty of it. There's also another chain that I can't remember the name of..Maui Kitchen? or something like that. There is one Lihaina f (sp?) that also has very good meals for $6-7 dollars and has a very nice seating area outside by the water. Don't forget to get the discount card for Safeway. You can get it and use it on your first visit, then keep it for the rest of the trip.

Maybe this will help.
We were there 11 nights. We spent:
$40 on bkfst (was included 5 days at resort - ate super cheap other days)
$160 on lunches (not including the 1 or 2 included w/some activities)
$825 on dinners - had 2 REALLY nice dinners and all the others were normal, nice places just not as fancy
So when all was said & done we spent about $100/day on food.

I'm in Oklahoma right now and shopping at Super Wal-mart for food and household items. I notice that most items are AT LEAST $1 less than Oahu. Some much more. Of course coming from California or somewhere else may not be as high of a jump. I would budget 50% more than you would normally spend just to be safe. It also depends on how frugal you eat. I can just go in somewhere and order a salad or something cheap on the menu.

we had buffet breakfasts at our hotel which were about $40. It would be such a heavy breakfast that we would just snack on stuff during the day and then have a nice dinner approx. $100 and sometimes cheaper on other nights depending on how hungry we were.

there is a costco there too...

We have made three trips to Hawaii, and all 3 times, we got a grocery savings card at the grocery store. There are prices on some things that are for the locals, and there are also higher prices on those same things for tourists. If you get a grocery card, you get the "locals" prices. The cards are very easy to get, are free, and there are no questions asked. Just ask at the customer service desk.
We generally used Safeway in the Cannery Mall, and found them to be the most reasonable, with or without the card.