The airport test looks at the state: the passport queue, the taxi rank, the toilets. It tells you how a government behaves when strangers are watching. The supermarket is the second test, and it looks at something different: the economy you would actually live in, week after week, long after the novelty of arrival has worn off.
The supermarket has one big advantage over the airport. Its numbers exist. Every year Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, compares the price of the same basket of goods and services across 36 European countries. Every year it publishes how much of their budget households spend on food. And every month it publishes food inflation, country by country. Put those three tables next to what you see in the aisles and a supermarket visit turns from a shopping trip into a reading of the country.
Groceries Are the Great Equaliser
Start with the finding that surprises most people. Food prices differ far less between countries than almost everything else.
Eurostat's price level indices for 2025 set the EU average at 100. For food and non-alcoholic beverages, the cheapest country in the comparison is North Macedonia at 74.8 and the most expensive is Switzerland at 155.9. That is a gap of about two to one. For total household consumption, the range runs from 49.7 in North Macedonia to 183.7 in Iceland, a gap of almost four to one.
Inside the EU the pattern is the same. Romania has the lowest food price level at 79.8 and Luxembourg the highest at 122.4, a spread of roughly one and a half to one. For overall household consumption the same two countries sit at 58.9 and 148.0, a spread of two and a half to one.
The reason is simple. A packet of pasta, a bag of coffee or a bottle of olive oil is traded across borders. Supermarket chains buy on markets that are open to their competitors in the next country. What cannot be traded is the rent of the shop, the wage of the cashier and the price of the flat you go home to. So a country that looks cheap on paper is rarely cheap at the till. It is cheap in the things you cannot put in a shopping trolley.
This matters for anyone building a budget for a move. If a relocation plan assumes that food will cost half of what it costs at home because "everything is cheaper there", the plan is wrong before it starts. Groceries are the line in the budget that moves least. Housing, domestic help, restaurants and personal services are where the savings, or the shocks, come from. The honest numbers are in what a Plan B actually costs per month, and food is never the line that makes or breaks them.
Read the Gap Between the Shelf and the Café
The most useful single comparison in the Eurostat tables is not the food price level on its own. It is the food price level set against the price level for restaurants and accommodation services. The gap between those two numbers tells you what local labour costs.
Look at the 2025 figures:
- Portugal: food 102.0, restaurants and accommodation 73.6
- Bulgaria: food 92.6, restaurants 55.7
- Greece: food 105.3, restaurants 86.1
- Croatia: food 105.5, restaurants 89.6
- Spain: food 95.3, restaurants 85.4
- Italy: food 101.1, restaurants 110.8
- Germany: food 102.4, restaurants 108.4
- Ireland: food 115.5, restaurants 118.1
- Denmark: food 120.5, restaurants 142.0
In Portugal, groceries cost about the EU average while restaurant and hotel prices sit about a quarter below it. In Bulgaria, groceries are close to the average and restaurant and hotel prices are little more than half of it. In Denmark and Italy the relationship flips: the restaurant bill carries a premium over the shelf.
A restaurant meal is mostly labour and rent with some food attached. When a country's restaurants are much cheaper than its supermarkets would suggest, the people cooking and serving are paid little by EU standards. That reads two ways, and both matter.
If you arrive with income from abroad, a pension, a portfolio or a remote salary, that gap works in your favour. Services are where your money stretches.
If you plan to earn locally, the same gap is a warning. The wage that makes the café cheap is the wage you will be offered. And the groceries, which cost roughly what they cost in Germany, will take a much larger bite out of it.
What the Basket Weighs
The second table is the share of household spending that goes on food. Eurostat publishes it as the weight of food in each country's consumer price index. For 2025, the HICP item weights show:
- Switzerland: 10.0% of household spending goes on food and non-alcoholic drinks
- Ireland: 11.3%
- Germany: 13.1%
- France: 14.7%
- EU average: 16.5%
- Spain: 18.0%
- Italy: 18.1%
- Malta: 18.2%
- Greece: 18.6%
- Portugal: 21.1%
- Croatia: 21.4%
- Bulgaria: 22.0%
- Latvia: 26.8%
- Romania: 28.3%
Economists have known for a long time that the poorer a household is, the larger the share of its budget that goes on food. The table shows that pattern at the level of whole countries. In Ireland a family spends about one euro in nine at the supermarket. In Romania it is more than one euro in four.
Why should a newcomer care? Because the share of the budget spent on food decides how a society reacts when food gets expensive. Where groceries are a tenth of spending, a price spike is an irritation. Where they are more than a quarter, it is a political event. Governments in high-share countries come under direct pressure to intervene in retail prices, margins and supply, and the supermarket is where that intervention shows up first. A foreign resident does not vote in most of those elections, but lives with the results.
The Food Inflation Memory
The third table is inflation. Europe has recent, painful data on what happens when food prices run.
According to Eurostat's monthly inflation series, food and non-alcoholic beverages in the EU were 19.2% more expensive in March 2023 than a year earlier. The national peaks were very different. In Hungary the annual rate reached 47.9% in December 2022. In Romania it hit 23.0% in January 2023. Spain peaked at 16.6% in February 2023 and Ireland at 13.2% in March 2023.
Those are not abstract figures for someone who moved to one of those countries on a fixed income from abroad. A near-doubling of food inflation compared with the neighbours changes the monthly arithmetic within a year. It also tells you something about a country's exposure: to energy prices, to its currency, to the structure of its retail sector and to its own policy choices.
When you look at a country, look up its food inflation record for 2022 and 2023 as well as its current rate. A country's worst year tells you more than its average year. The same logic runs through the ten year test: you are not choosing a country for this summer, you are choosing it for the bad years that will come.
What the Shelves Show That the Tables Cannot
Statistics give you the averages. The aisles give you the texture. None of what follows is a law of nature, but each point is something you can check in half an hour, and each is a hypothesis you can then test against harder evidence.
Unit prices and labels. Are prices clearly shown, and can you compare them per kilo or per litre without doing mental arithmetic? A retail sector that makes comparison easy is usually a competitive one.
Where the food comes from. Read the origin on fresh produce, dairy and meat. A shelf dominated by imports means the country's grocery prices follow exchange rates and shipping costs. For an island or a small economy that is normal, but it means your budget is exposed to things outside the country's control.
What is locked away. Security tags on everyday items such as razors, baby formula, coffee or olive oil tell you what shop owners fear. Look at what is behind glass, not only at what is on the shelf.
How people pay. Watch the queue at the checkout. Cards, phones, cash, and in some places vouchers or benefit cards. The mix tells you something about the banking system and the informal economy.
The empty spaces. Gaps on the shelves, especially in staples, can mean a supply problem, a price dispute between retailers and suppliers, or a government price rule that has made a product unprofitable to stock. Ask which one it is.
The staff. Count the open checkouts against the length of the queues. It is the same question the airport test asks at passport control, applied to the private sector: does the system match capacity to demand, or does it leave the customer to absorb the difference?
Run the Numbers Before You Fly
The best time to run the supermarket test is before the trip, not during it.
Open the Eurostat price level table and note three numbers for the country you are considering: the food price level, the restaurant price level and the total household consumption price level. Compare them with the same three numbers for the country you live in now. Then look up the food share of household spending and the food inflation record for 2022 and 2023.
You now have a first answer to four questions. Will your grocery bill move much? Will services be cheap or expensive? How exposed are local households, and therefore local politics, to food prices? How badly did the country handle the last price shock?
Then go and stand in a supermarket on a weekday evening and see whether what you find confirms the numbers or contradicts them. When the two disagree, dig. Averages can hide as much as they show, as anyone who has read how wealth statistics mislead will know.
The Limits of the Test
A test without limits is a prejudice, so here are the limits.
National averages hide regions. A capital city and a rural province can have very different price levels. Eurostat compares countries, not neighbourhoods, and the supermarket in a tourist resort is not the one the locals use.
Price levels measure price, not quality. A lower index for food does not tell you whether the tomatoes taste of anything. Only the shelf does.
The comparison is European. Eurostat's tables cover EU members, candidate countries and a few neighbours. For the United States, the Gulf or South East Asia you will need other sources, and the numbers will not be directly comparable.
Your basket is not the average basket. If you buy imported brands, organic produce or foods from home, your personal price level can sit far above the national one, and in a small import-dependent market it often will.
And finally, groceries are one line in a budget that also contains rent, schooling, health insurance and tax. The supermarket tells you about the economy. It does not replace the harder work of weighing up the cost of staying where you are against the cost of leaving.
The Checklist
Before and during a visit to a country you are seriously considering:
- Food price level against your home country (Eurostat, total food and non-alcoholic beverages)
- Restaurant price level against the food price level: a large gap means cheap local labour
- Total consumption price level: where the real savings or costs sit
- Food share of household spending: how politically sensitive grocery prices are
- Food inflation in 2022 and 2023: how the country coped with the last shock
- Unit pricing and labels in the store
- Country of origin on fresh food: how exposed prices are to imports and currency
- What is locked away and what is missing from the shelves
- How people pay at the checkout
- Checkouts open against queue length
Score it honestly, and set it next to your airport score. A country that passes both is worth a closer look. A country that fails both is telling you something the brochure never will.
Work with Sebastian
If a country has passed your first tests and you want to know whether it passes the harder ones, the tax treatment, the residence rules, the banking and the exit from where you live now, book a consultation.
