Where to Buy South African Food in Canada, and Whether It's Worth It
Just over 51,000 people born in South Africa were counted living in Canada in the 2021 census — a small enough number, spread across a country this size, that “where do I buy food from home” is a genuinely practical question with a real answer.
The honest answer depends on where you land, and it’s worth thinking through properly rather than assuming every city will have what you’re used to.
Start with where South Africans actually settle
The census data is clear on this much: three provinces hold roughly 89% of the South African-born population — Ontario (about 42%), British Columbia (about 30%) and Alberta (about 17%). Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Hamilton and Ottawa are named as the main population clusters, though exact city-level counts aren’t published in the data available to us. Where the community is larger, the informal infrastructure around it — shops, suppliers, social groups — tends to be more developed too. That’s not a guarantee, but it’s the honest starting point if you’re choosing between two cities and food culture matters to you.
If you’re heading to a smaller centre or a province outside that trio, budget for doing more of this yourself, at least at first.
Three ways people actually source it
Specialty and international grocers. Larger Canadian cities generally have some form of import or specialty grocery scene, even if it isn’t South African-specific — biltong, boerewors and rusks turn up at stores serving the broader Southern African or international community in places with enough demand to support one. This varies enormously by city and isn’t something we can promise you’ll find nearby.
Ordering online. Import and specialty food ordering exists in Canada the way it does everywhere now, though we don’t have reliable data on which specific services deliver South African products or what they charge, and pricing claims you’ll see in Facebook groups should be treated as anecdotal rather than current fact.
Making do with substitutes. This is the unglamorous option and often the right one. Biltong culture translates loosely to Canadian jerky, though the texture and spicing are different enough that most South Africans notice immediately. A proper braai needs boerewors more than it needs any other single ingredient, and that’s usually the hardest thing to substitute convincingly — most butchers simply don’t make it. Some South Africans learn to make their own once they find a butcher willing to work from a recipe.
What it actually costs
We don’t have reliable data on the cost of imported South African products in Canada, and neither, honestly, does most of what circulates online — it moves too much by city and supplier to state a number here that would still be true by the time you read it. What’s safe to say is the general pattern true of imported specialty food everywhere: it costs meaningfully more than the local equivalent, and how much more is worth checking against your actual budget rather than assuming.
Why this matters more than it sounds like it should
It’s easy to file this under nice-to-have. In practice, the first time you find a shop that stocks something specific from home, or meet someone else buying the same obscure spice, it tends to land harder than expected. Food from home is rarely really about the food. It’s one of the more reliable ways South Africans find each other in a new city, and the conversation that starts over a packet of biltong has a way of turning into something more useful than groceries.
Cape2Canada’s guides focus on the paperwork side of the move, but if community and settling in are the part you’re thinking about most right now, our blog covers more of that ground too.