52 businesses in Tamarindo
Tamarindo's retail landscape is unusually diverse for a beach town, with 52 listings spanning surf gear, chocolate boutiques, dive shops, specialty food, artisan crafts, and unique local experiences. Reina's Chocolate is a standout — producing artisanal Costa Rican cacao products that reflect the country's chocolate-growing heritage and have won international recognition. Scuba Tamarindo and Freedive Costa Rica anchor the watersports equipment side, offering gear sales alongside instruction that blurs the line between retail and experience. The broader shopping scene along the main strip includes surf brands, locally designed swimwear, hammocks, wood crafts, and the inevitable tourist souvenir segment — quality varies significantly across vendors, so taking time to browse before buying is worthwhile. Unlike some expat beach towns, Tamarindo has enough retail density that you can outfit yourself for surf, dive, yoga, and casual life here without necessarily ordering from abroad. Supporting local businesses here also carries real meaning — many of the small retail shops are expat-founded businesses that represent someone's life project, not a franchise outlet.
Showing 1-25 of 52 businesses
Browse retail shopping listings on ExpatsList to find stores in Tamarindo that carry imported and international products. Grocery stores, specialty shops, and markets catering to expats are all included.
ExpatsList covers retail shopping businesses in Tamarindo from tour agencies and bars to community groups and hobby shops. It's a great way to find things to do and meet other expats when you're new to the city.
Many cities have thriving expat communities. Check our retail shopping section for social clubs, sports groups, and community spaces in Tamarindo where you can connect with other internationals and locals alike.
Reina's Chocolate produces exceptional single-origin Costa Rican chocolate using cacao from local farms, and it's the kind of genuinely unique product that makes a meaningful gift or souvenir rather than a generic trinket. The shop also offers tastings that explain the bean-to-bar process and Costa Rica's cacao heritage. If you're shipping anything home, chocolate travels well and represents the region authentically.
Purchasing surf boards, wetsuits, fins, and dive equipment from Scuba Tamarindo or Freedive Costa Rica avoids airline oversize fees and gives you staff advice from people who know the local conditions — water temperatures, current patterns, break characteristics — in ways that online retailers cannot. For dive equipment especially, having a local shop relationship also simplifies service, repairs, and air fills throughout your stay.
Tamarindo has a genuine concentration of locally designed clothing, jewelry, and craft boutiques run by expat artisans who've made the town their home and production base. These items are genuinely different from mass-produced tourist merchandise, and supporting them keeps craft skills and creative businesses viable in the community. The smaller off-main-strip boutiques typically have the most distinctive inventory.
