I buy sardines quite a bit at home. I often eat them for lunch on weekends. They are a good source of protein, calcium and omega 3 fatty acids. They are healthy, easy and I have a brand that I actually like the taste of.
When we were traveling in the Azores we came across a novelty sardines store in the city of Ponta Delgada. I'm pretty sure that its a franchise chain of stores, because I've seen these shops in other parts of Europe, specifically in Mainland Portugal. There is one in the city of Lisbon, if I'm remembering correctly.
The store sells an assortment of different sardines and canned seafood products in colorful trendy packaging. They were, of course, being sold for very exorbitant prices as well. It is clearly a store that caters to tourists and is marketed as a novelty gift shop. Sardines and canned fish to bring home from vacation, for friends or family or oneself. I don't get the impression that this is a store that locals frequent often for their regular sardines meals. They are just too expensive to be practical. The shop sells tins of lobster and I think the most expensive even had gold flakes in it. Again, these are very clearly a novelty item.
Question: At what price tag do sardines become a scam do you think?
So anyway, I got suckered into buying a tin. The assortment of colorful marketing. How could I resist? I got a bit of sticker shock when I saw how much they were but after humming and hawing about it for a while, and some encouragement from my wife, I decided to just go for it. Give them a go for fun. What the hell.
I went with the most basic option of simple sardines. I wanted to try the most basic to really get a sense if these were anything better than what I normally buy at the grocery store. They were also the cheapest option.
So what do you think they cost me? Any guesses?
Well I paid €15 Euro for one single can of sardines!
To put that into perspective the sardines that I buy at the grocery store cost $3.99 regular price and $3.29 on sale.
Those are CAD prices also, which is approximately €2.49 to €2.03 euro!
So to reverse the pricing into CAD to make a proper comparison the vacation sardines cost me $24.32 CAD which is 8x more expensive then the grocery store variety!! Or around that I think.
But look at the fancy packaging they wrapped them in... worth it right??..
So I ended up eating these for lunch one day on that same trip. It was a way to recoup some of their cost. I didn't need to buy extra food that day at a restaurant. I will admit, they were very good. They weren't fishy at all and I would go as far to say that they were probably the best sardines that I've ever tried. I have probably only tried 3 or 4 different brands and varieties of sardines though, so take that with a grain of salt. Even though they were the best sardines that I've ever had, the enjoyment that I got from them was not 8x more than my normal grocery store variety. For that reason, my final judgement is that these are not worth the hefty price tag and are therefore a scam. Albeit a delicious one. I'd call them a low risk scam overall, but a scam nonetheless.
