Thanks all.
If I lived nextdoor, I’d provide flowers and farm shop cake - problem is I have to leave that to my housekeeper because I’m hundreds of miles away, and without being picky, she might leave bad supermarket flowers (I realise there are better ones) and a really generic cake.
Bread - people say that maybe they’d like gluten free.
Milk - people say they’d like the offer of a plant alternative.
Before you know it, you’re asking your housekeeper to do a bespoke shop for guests with intolerances, when actually you’re just trying to leave a token.
Judging by your responses, I think milk and biscuits is enough (with small supplies of everything else on my list), or possibly milk plus jam, clotted cream and scones if we can find nice ones (they tend to get bundled up into a ‘cream tea’ in the fridge with the cream, which makes the scones go hard).
I’d love to send an inventory - we are managed by an agency, the agency could send it on our behalf to avoid guests having our contact details (we pay the agency 20% so that we don’t have to deal with enquiries). My issue with this is that, in my experience, if something is missing from the inventory then the guests will complain, so although it’s hugely convenient for guests to have this list, it just causes problems for the owner when they try to help.
Similarly I’ve trialled emailing guests information about local restaurants/activities in advance (because places get very booked up) and several have replied that they didn’t need this information, thank you very much!
Another thing I trialled was a nice bottle of wine for returning guests, however when trying to establish their preferred wine, I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that they don’t drink and don’t intend to start.
I think sometimes you just can’t win.