Post Summary: The definitive road trip food list with 50 snack ideas and meals to keep you happy the entire car ride. Plus, tips for what else to bring and recommendations for the best road trip coolers.
Road trips are the classic adventure that everyone needs to do at least once in their life, whether you’re traveling solo, with your best buds, or packing in the whole family. What’s the secret to a great road trip? Besides having your maps already downloaded to your phone (travel must #1), it’s to have a collection of the best road trip food at your disposal.
Being prepared with good travel food will ensure you don’t:
- Kill your travel mates because you’re hangry.
- Get killed by your travel mates because they’re hangry.
- Get lured in by every gasoline stop and somehow end up with bright orange Cheetos and Slim Jims.
- Waste your travel budget dining on Subway and Wendys road trip meals.
After road tripping with a toddler for half a year around the US, we’ve figured out the ultimate road trip food list so we can enjoy the journey together feeling nourished and happy. Our list includes road trip food ideas for adults and kids as well as healthy car snacks.
After the road trip food list, we’ve included non-food items you’ll want to bring and some tips on choosing the best road trip cooler.
Need More Road Trip Tips? Check out our other articles below:
The Ultimate Road Trip Packing List: 41 Essentials For The Road160 Fun, Deep, and Sometimes Silly Road Trip Questions
41 Fun and Challenging Road Trip Trivia Questions
17+ Fun Things To Do On A Road TripHow To Survive A Road Trip With A Toddler
40 Must Have Items To Have In Your Camper
*This road trip food list post may contain affiliate links, which means we might earn a small commission if you purchase from them. This is at no extra cost to you! We only recommend products and services we genuinely think are helpful.
The Ultimate Road Trip Food List
Healthy snacks for a road trip
We’ll start with healthy snacks for the road. I don’t know about you, but when we go on road trips, we tend to fall back on fast food and junk food. In an effort to have a quasi healthy road trip we make sure to include some healthy options so we can at least feel like we’ve balanced out all our snickers bars and Wendy’s frosties. Here’s our list of the best road trip foods that won’t leave you feeling sluggish at the end of the day. We also added in a few recommendations of some of our favorite brands.
Healthy Snacks For Car Rides
1. Fruit: Bananas, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, grapes, apples, oranges
2. Sliced veggies: carrots, cucumbers, celery, bell peppers, pickles, radishes
3. Cherry tomatoes
4. Olives (buy the pitted kinds)
5. Salsa
6. Deli sandwiches or wraps (already made from home or pre-purchased)
7. A simple charcuterie spread (summer sausage, pepperoni, sliced cheese, dried apricots, olives, crackers, etc.)
8. Popcorn
9. Yellow corn chips, blue corn chips, kale chips
10. Granola Bars and Energy Bars (Munk Bars are our favorite!)
11. Dried Fruit
12. Crackers (cheese crackers, saltines, whole wheat crackers, these almond crackers are my favorite!)
13. Pretzels
14. Nuts (almonds, peanuts, cashews, macadamia, walnuts, pecans)
15. Trail mix
16. Tuna (Get the kind that doesn’t need to be refrigerated! It can become a snack on crackers, a sandwich, or added to a salad)
17. Coconut chips (Dang chips are our favorite.)
18. Dark chocolate
19. Wasabi peas
20. Fruit leather
21. Whole-grain muffins
22. Bread (pretzel rolls, pita bread)
23. Water (Preferably in a water bottle like a Hydro Flask that will keep your water cold for hours.)
*The following are all still healthy snacks for a road trip but will require a cooler. Skip them if you are going sans cooler. Further down, we’ll talk about the best road trip coolers.
23. Hard-boiled eggs
24. Small yogurt containers or drinkable yogurts
25. Humus
26. Guacamole
27. Pasta salad
28. Lentil salad
29. Grocery store salad kits (Can be eaten out of the bag! Just cut the top, pour in the salad dressing, and shake it away. You can also opt to do salads in a jar)
30. Cheese
Essential Road Trip Snacks
These road trip snacks might not be the healthiest, but look…you can’t always be perfect!
Road Trip Snack List
32. Beef Jerky
33. Chips
34. Fun candy (Any kind of candy that brings you joy for your road trip. Gummy bears, reeses pieces, airheads)
35. Ranch dip to go with your healthy veggies
36. Fun drinks (Just make sure the drink is able to be resealed or small enough that you’ll drink it all quickly. My favorite road trip drink is coconut water!)
37. Cookies
Road Trip Snacks For Kids And Toddlers
While we don’t put a distinction between road trip food for the adults and road trip food for kids, here are some fun ideas you can add in addition to the travel food listed above. We found that allowing for leniency with what we let our kid snack on will mean a more fun time for everyone in the car.
Road Trip Snacks For Toddlers and Kids
38. String Cheese or Babybels
39. Peanut butter pretzels
40. Clementines
41. Squeezable applesauce
42. Squeezable nut butters (peanut butter, almond butter, cashew butter)
43. Graham crackers
44. Goldfish
45. Fruit snacks
46. Fruit roll ups
47. Peanut butter and jelly sandwich
48. Dry cereal
49. Nutella
50. Snap pea crisps ( I love the wasabi ones from Harvest Snaps. I can only get them online because my grocery store never has them!)
Essential Non Food Items
Now that you’ve got your travel food and made your road trip food list, let’s talk about non food items to have on your road trip packing list. We are both advocates for minimal waste living so we do advise using reusable items like real utensils, glass containers, and reusable straws rather than single-use items. I know it can feel like a nuisance, but once you get used to doing it, it’s easy to integrate it into your habits. We’ve provided links to different products, so you can check out some good options.
-Trash bags (old shopping bags work well)
–Stackable glass or plastic containers (While glass may feel like a hazard, I find that most of them are built for endurance and would require some extreme throwing around to actually break. Either way, bringing containers rather than an entire bag of snacks is a great space saver.)
-Reusable straws (we like this multipack option here)
-Bento boxes (another option is to make individual bento boxes with everyone’s preferred snacks put in. It’s essentially a healthier version of a Lunchable. Great option if you’re traveling with kids.) Check out these cute bento boxes here.
-Utensils
-Plates
-Paper towels
-Hand sanitizer
-Ziplock bags
-Wipes
-Cups if you want to share drinks
-Ice packs for the cooler (We prefer to use reusable ice packs like these, but frozen water bottles or ice cubes in a ziplock back will do the job as well.)
-Reusable grocery bag to carry your non-perishable stuff
-Plastic tub (If you’re going on a long road trip and will have lots of snacks, a good option is to pack all your non-perishable items in a tub like this.)
-Cooler
Related: A Comprehensive Guide To the Best Toddler Carriers For Traveling
Best Road Trip Coolers
If you’re going on a long road trip, you’ll definitely want to bring a cooler so you can have more options for the journey. Things to consider when deciding what kind of road trip cooler to bring.
- How much space will you have in your car?
- How many days will you be driving and subsequently how much food will you need?
- Cost of the cooler
- If you road trip or camp a lot and will use a cooler several times a year.
Yeti Roadi 24 Cooler
Our choice for the best road trip cooler is the Yeti Roadi 24 Cooler. It’s a mid-sized cooler that can fit a bottle of wine standing upright. We like its lightweight design and that its compact size can fit on the ground behind the passenger seat.
It has a mid-range price point, so if you are wanting something more economical, you’ll probably want our next pick.
Igloo MaxCold Cooler
If all you need is a no-frills cooler to keep your food cold, the Igloo Maxcold Cooler is a great option. The thin design also makes it a great choice for someone wanting to save room in the car.
Arctic Zone Titan Deep Freeze
If you like a soft cooler, the Arctic Zone Titan Deep Freeze consistently offers the best bang for your buck.
Yeti Tundra 45
Lastly, if you are wanting a high-end cooler that will be great for camping and can take the wear and tear of consistent use, the Yeti Tundra 45 is your best bet. Yeti is the reigning champion of coolers and you can’t go wrong with anything you purchase from them.
Before you head out on your epic road trip, we suggest packing the night before. Alleviating as much stress as possible on the day you leave, especially when you’re doing a road trip with a toddler, is key to enjoying the road trip journey. We find that the night before, it’s best to:
- Wash, cut, and peel all vegetables and fruit.
- Pack up all non perishable food and supplies.
- Prepare any road trip sandwiches you plan to eat.
Lastly, don’t forget to make sure all your tasty road trip snacks are within reaching distance in the car.
We hope you enjoyed our complete road trip food list. Happy road tripping!
**For more road trip inspiration follow us on Instagram. We travel… a lot.
NEED SOME TRAVEL INSPIRATION?
A Complete Guide To A Utah National Parks Road TripHow To Plan A Cross Country Road Trip + Fun Routes To Take
10 National Parks To Visit In The East50 Family Bucket List Experiences In The US
PIN IT FOR LATER
