We are planning a family vacation in June for 23 people. Does anyone have suggestions for what to bring from home and where to buy on St John?

Whoa, that's a lot of people! I'm thinking maybe what you should do is to figure on doing a huge shopping run on STT, as opposed to trying to bring anything from home. Too complicated for that many people!

If possible rent at least 2 of the vehicle fleet you will need on STT and designate them as cargo for a provisioning trip to CostU less in STT - you will surely save $100's of dollars over STJ shopping.
If you are planning any dinners out as a group I would recommend making those reservations asap- many of our restaurants are small by stateside standards - maybe consider having a chef do a few evenings at wherever you are staying. Good luck with the planning and you should consider event planning as a possible career move if it all works out!

I knew there was a deal for a while about taking rental cars off STT to STJ, but I guess you can do it now? Definitely visit Cost U Less!

We did a Gang of 24 for Thanksgiving 2006 in three houses on St. John. It was manageable by breaking the shopping/provisioning down by house. We did one group dinner at my villa for Thanksgiving. There are so many different tastes and directions for a group that big that we did not try to please everyone.

As LocalSailor & Carol, it would be great to do a provisioning run on STT. The biggest impact is for convenience foods like frozen prepared food, snacks and sodas. On St. John there are four markets in Cruz Bay and one in Coral Bay. Starfish Market is similar to a small continental US grocery. We like Pine Peace for better prices on staples, rum and beer. Dolphin Market and St. John Market near the Westin are mid-range. You should expect grocery prices to be 30% over those at home, some more and some less.

To bring from home, look at the most expensive items such as snacks and any foods you cannot live without. I brought a cooked, deboned, shrink-wrapped and frozen turkey which let me spend the day on the beach Thanksgiving Day. When we have a big group I'll also bring dry-cured bacon as well as frozen steaks. But, the availability of good quality food and produce has improved, even since 2006. You don't have to bring a think unless you want to.

Have fun!!

Cheers, RickG

Our last big group trip consisted of 4 families for 10 days, I believe 18 people total? we rented 2 villa's close together, each family had a vehicle. Over the years we discovered that sharing a vehicle can cause friction <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Grin.gif" alt="" />

Each family chose one dinner to cook for the whole gang, the rest of the dinners were out.

We started a weekly $20 collection from each family, after 6 months we had a lot of dough! We bought 50 lbs of steaks, sausages, bacon etc and froze it and checked it in a Polar Bear cooler. These meats were for our family dinners and it worked out great. The rest of our provisions came from many of the stores already mentioned.

We had enough money in our pre-trip collection to charter Bad Kitty privately for our gang to visit the BVI, best day of the trip! Have a blast! <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Cheers.gif" alt="" />

23 people? You definitely need to report back and tell us how it went, what worked, what didn’t and so on.

We have used Blue Sky Management for provisioning the villa for the past couple of trips. I find her ordering system to be the easiest and her pricing structure fair and straightforward. I used other companies in the past but like Blue Sky much more. I have heard Starfish will provision but have no experience with them.

http://blueskyconcierge.com/

How many houses are you renting? I would let each house worry about and pay for their own food and drinks.

We checked coolers for many trips and if you like doing advance planning, it can be a great time and money saver.

We took meats (steaks, split chicken breasts, sausages, bacon, ham steaks), specialty cheeses and spices for pre-planned meals. I did this for ease of meal planning as well as quality. I am very picky about my meats. That being said, the STJ markets really have come a long way. While I didn’t buy meats, I remember looking at the meats at Starfish and thinking I would buy there next trip.

Snack foods are really pricy on STJ and a lot of people will do a checked bag of snack items like cookies, crackers, cereal and such.

I fill the voids in my suitcase with nuts, coffee and granola bars.

Thank you all for your suggestions. We have 2 houses which are about 2 blocks apart. We have just 2 families- my sister and I and our husbands, children and grandchildren.
We have 5 cars rented so we are good there. We plan to eat most of our meals together, but I like the idea of each "family unit" being responsible for a dinner.