If you do UK cottage holidays, can I ask you...?

[VeryFoolishFay]

..If the offer of a hot meal on arrival day would be of interest?

I've just taken over the housekeeping/management of a rural family sized holiday cottage about half a mile from me. The owner lives in London, he is a very nice older man, always arranges a nice bottle of wine and flowers and a welcome card - likes to offer a personalised welcome via the manager.

We have day jobs but my DH and I are keen cooks, run an occasional pop up restaurant etc. We have food safety certs and a 5* hygiene certificate for our own kitchen. We have a Facebook page that could be checked out.

We were thinking that for those who have a long journey, there might be an appeal of a home cooked casserole in the fridge ready to be heated up etc. We are miles from any shops at all, although there is a decent, fairly pricey local pub.

A few months ago, we were asked to provide a 3 course special meal for a multi generational family group staying at a different local holiday let. We cooked it mostly at home, served it and cleared up again. It went well - great feedback. Would love to do it again.

Has anyone tried this at a holiday let? If you haven't, is it the sort of thing that you would be interested in? To me, it offers the ease of eating out but with no taxis, babysitters or expensive restaurant wine...but I'm probably biased!

I think to give an option of a hot meal is a great idea. The way some on here are going on you’d think you had offered them arsenic casserole with a side order of strychnine. 🙄

I think giving people the option of a meal or goodies basket ( wine eggs cake home baked bread etc) would work. If it was just me and DH the meal would be awesome. With kids, goodies would be better. We always order a Tesco delivery to arrive at our cottage about an hour after we do with good for the week so whilst a meal would be appreciated it's not essential. Wine however and flowers really are.

Arsenic and strychnine, you say? There's food for thought.

Please could you PM me about your cottage please? I was sold when I saw the pic of your cake

Will do, we don't own this, just manage on behalf of the owners. I'll send you the Facebook page for my little cake business too, if you fancy seeing a little more sponge 😉

Based on feedback, I will suggest to the owners that, if he is happy, we add some info to his web page and links to our foodie and baking Facebook pages and Trip Advisor entry so there are photos and reviews. Then guests have the info they need to make a choice. It's quite exciting, I feel that it could be a very popular service for those who are interested.

We don't eat out much ourselves (we're a bit tight with ourselves and often find restaurant food a bit meh unless it's a really good place) but the meals I really remember are where there was a personal rather than corporate setting.

We got married at a tiny cottage in Scotland, just us and the two witnesses provided and later that day, the on-site chefs in the main building cooked a fabulous meal and it was brought over and served course by course.

They took all the dishes away with them and when we were finished, we sunk into the sofas, poured another glass of wine and turned on the tv. It was heaven.

Perhaps those are the feelings I am trying to replicate!

Thanks for all the feedback.