How to Thru-Hike the Appalachian Trail, Part 5: Grocery Store Resupplies

The Appalachian Trail is over 2,000 miles long and takes most thru-hikers between 5 and 7 months to complete.  When you’re hiking 20+ miles every day, your body becomes a calorie burning machine.  During my 2022 thru-hike, I was eating upwards of 4,000 calories per day while I was hiking, and then gorging myself whenever I got into town.  During the 6 months I spent on the AT, I spent a large portion of every day thinking about food… how much food was left in my pack, what snacks I would eat that day, what I would eat for dinner that night, how many days of food I had left, and what I wanted to eat when I got into town.  To keep up with all the calories you’ll be eating and burning, you need to have a solid resupply plan.

What is a Resupply? 

Resupplying is when you go into a town to refill your food bag with enough food and supplies to get you to the next town stop.  Typically, I carried around 3-5 days worth of food when I left each resupply point.  Some hikers carried more food in order to skip town stops, but food is heavy, and I preferred to carry a lighter load whenever I could. The longest resupply I had to carry was 6 days of food to get through the Smoky Mountains National Park. 

What are the resupply options on the Appalachian Trail?

There are several options for thru-hikers when it comes to resupplying on the AT.  You can buy food at grocery stores or outfitters in town, have someone mail resupply boxes to you at stops along the trail, or send “bounce boxes” to yourself on the trail. There are pros and cons to each option, and many hikers, including myself, choose to use a combination of methods.

How to resupply with grocery stores:

There are many grocery stores and outfitters to purchase your resupply along the Appalachian Trail, and you never need to hike for more than a few days at a time before getting to another stop.  Sometimes the trail passes directly through a town, such as Hot Springs, NC or Damascus, VA.  But most of the time, you will have to get off the trail to get to a town.   There are plenty of road crossings where you can hitchhike or pay for a shuttle to take you into town to get your resupply.  These stops are noted in the popular AT maps, such as The A.T. Guide book and the FarOut app.  

Now remember, these are generally small mountain communities that you’re stopping at, not big metropolitan areas.  You won’t find a lot of upscale grocery stores, specialty markets, or health food stores.  Most AT towns have a Dollar General where you can find your typical hiker fare- instant mashed potatoes, ramen, Knorr sides, tuna and chicken packets, nuts, dried fruit, chips, snacks, and candy.  Some towns have a larger grocery store, like an Ingles or Food Lion, and if you’re really lucky, a Walmart!  And few stops will have outfitters with gear and foods that are tailored to hikers where you can find freeze dried meals and individual portions of hiker snacks.  But there are also a few stops where your best resupply is just a small gas station or convenience store.

Pros of Grocery Store Resupply:

• Flexibility- Your tastes and preferences will likely change as you hike.  When you resupply at grocery stores along the way, you can buy whatever sounds good at the time. 

• Convenience- You don’t have to worry about sending and picking up boxes in the mail.  Just head into a town when you need more food and get your resupply from what’s available.  There are enough Dollar Generals, groceries, convenience stores, and hostels with resupply options to get you through the whole trail without a single mail drop.

Cons of Grocery Store Resupply:

• Lack of variety- Sometimes the Dollar General options get old, and you’ll get sick of eating ramen and mashed potatoes.  

• Not easy for special diets- The typical thru-hiker diet isn’t very healthy and doesn’t match a lot of special dietary needs.  Thru-hikers typically eat a lot of processed foods, high in calories and sugar, and not a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables.  Are you vegan? Gluten-free? Keto? Have food allergies? You might have a hard time finding foods that fit into your diet if you rely solely on grocery store resupplies.

• Hard to find freeze-dried meals- If you’d rather eat backpacker freeze-dried meals instead of peanut butter tortillas and ramen, you might have a hard time finding what you want.  There are a handful of outfitters along the trail that have backpacker meals, like Mountain House, Backpacker’s Pantry, Peak Refuel, etc., but you won’t be able to find these in most towns.

Tips for Resupplying in Grocery Stores:

• Many hostels and shuttle drivers will offer rides to grocery stores in town.  Check out your options before you head out.

• Some states along the AT, especially in the northern section, have banned plastic grocery bags, which means you’ll need to bring your own bag or be left carrying all your groceries in your arms when you leave.  Ask around if you need to bring a bag before you go. Many hostels will give you a reusable bag to take to the store.

• Leave your pack outside with a friend or leave it at a hostel/hotel.  Your pack probably smells terrible, and some stores will have signs asking you to leave them outside.

• Use a basket, not a cart (or buggy if you’re in the South).  It’s very easy to overbuy at the grocery store when you’ve got hiker hunger, and using a cart makes it even easier to just throw in everything that looks good (and everything will look good!).  Use a basket to limit how much you carry out, and it will give you a sense of how heavy your resupply is going to be.

• Barter and trade with your tramily.  You can buy and share items with others to give yourself more variety in your meals and snacks.  For example, if you buy a six pack of honeybuns and only want to carry 3, you can trade your extras with other hikers.  Maybe you can score some Snickers bars in exchange for your extra honeybuns. 

• Repackage everything! Make sure to buy some ziplock bags at the store and spend a few minutes repacking all of your grocery store items.  All those extra boxes, wrappers, and packaging take up a lot of space and add extra weight to your pack.  

• Grab some fresh foods, too.  You need more than just calories when you’re hiking, so don’t just stock up on junk foods.  Fresh fruits and veggies can be eaten right away or packed out to be eaten the first day on trail.  I’ve even carried out some bagged salads to eat when I got to camp and they held up pretty well.

Most thru-hikers use grocery stores as a main source of resupply on the Appalachian Trail because they are plentiful, easy to access, and convenient.  But a grocery store resupply strategy isn’t for everyone, and a lot of hikers use mail drops and bounce boxes as well.  If you're planning a thru-hike and want to learn more about other resupply options, check back in for my next article on those strategies soon!