Cheap meal ideas in hotel for 1 week for work

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I'm staying in a hotel for work in a weeks time. I need some meal/food ideas. It's room only and I don't have the money to eat out every night and don't really want to eat sandwiches every night. ill have a kettle. Anyone got any ideas?

I meant 4 or 5 evening meals, assuming breakfast is included in the room rate and she gets lunch at the course and the conference. You can usually get a bar meal at least for under £20.

Especially as it's unlikely to be a fancy place given how her company doesn't seem to be very organised or experienced at doing business travel. They've probably booked her into a Premier Inn or similar with an add on cheap pub type place.

But in any case, it's not the point because the company should be organising hotels, train tickets etc and freely offering advances to anyone who might need it.

OP can you get an overdraft from bank if you don't have a credit card?

You can often do this by just clicking a button in your Internet banking.

You could tell your company you'll be claiming the interest charges (bank overdrafts are 40% apr) or they could send you an advance if they prefer.

You keep saying you’ll get most of it back. Why Is it costing you money to go on work trips?

I get why you might not want to rock the boat because you’re the sole earner at the moment but this is ridiculous. You should not be out of pocket for doing your job and you absolutely should be able to get an imprest for business travel. You need to have a serious chat with your manager.

This is ridiculous. No way should you be expected to travel & do ridiculous things like cook in a kettle!

You must have known this was coming up? You should have flagged the situation with your line manager. While being expected to meet subsistence costs eg meals & travel while there is quite standard, travel to the event & hotel costs should be paid by the company in advance.

Usually at a conference your expenses are minimal as you would be fed lunch & dinner there so it would be maybe a meal the first night / taxis that you might pay for.

For others who travel regularly for work, eg to meet clients, they have a company credit card usually.

No way is it standard or acceptable to pay that much of your own money up front. I couldn't manage this either.

Please talk to your manager today.

I stayed regularly in hotels during covid lockdowns (when hotels were open) so it was hard to eat out and I was fed up of it anyway. My tips:

• Ziplock bag with a sponge and some dishwashing soap.

• bring cup, bowl, plate and cutlery including a teaspoon (not all rooms have them now, some only the wooden stir sticks and paper cups) and a cutting knife

• bring some bin bags

• bring tea bags (hotels are less generous with them now) - esp if you have a fav tea at home

Then you can eat more comfortably, more hygienically plus get rid of all the containers (hotel bins are tiny and the hotel room ends up smelling if the food containers aren't in a closed bin). And keep the bin bag in the bathroom.

With this combo you're much more able to eat a wide range of food and not just picnic every evening (which gets boring quickly), even if it's somewhat limited by lack of cooking ability. And with the teaspoon you can eat some nice mini desserts!

You need to find your voice.
You DO NOT travel unless they pay upfront for hotel and travel because you can’t afford it. There will be someone who can authorise immediate reimbursement or upfront payment or advance allowance for expenses if you shout loud enough. Don’t be embarrassed- they want you to do a job that includes travel - so they need to pay for it.

My local hospital canteen has a few microwaves for people to reheat their meals. If there's a hospital nearby, I'd buy a M&S ready meal to reheat and eat there.

You need to think a bit creatively and see what's available near where you're staying. For eg, I was in Edinburgh for the festival & the local mosque had an open kitchen selling meals cheaply to the festival crowd. I think I had a samosa & a biryaani for around £6, it was very popular with the students. Have a look at restaurants and food markets near multicultural & student areas.

Exactly @Pickle1512

Plus challenging policies like this will help others.

What about the new graduates or someone who's been out of work for a while so they have no money and aren't going to be paid until the end of next month that gets sent on a training course or 'orientation week' at head office in the early days of employment?

They're not going to have hundreds of pounds to shell out on travel and subsistence and may feel less able to speak up.

Bag of washed salad and some precooked chick

en breasts. Same for lunch next day. Sainsbury's used to do cooked pizza. Rotisserie chicken.. Fruit. Veggies. Dip. Wraps.

Take an insulated picnic box and buy a bag of ice everyday (£1) from a local supermarket. It keeps milk and juice cold for breakfast and you can keep snacks and sandwiches in waterproof boxes.
Everyday you just pour away the water from the melt and chuck in the fresh bag of ice.

We have a credit card we only use for work trips, it also makes claiming back much easier.

In future if you book somewhere yourself get an airbnb so you have cooking facilities. If breakfast is included in the room then £100 is a decent amount, especially if you have a wetherspoons, harvester etc near by. You could easily eat in spoons each night.

If you go for cuppa meals etc, make sure you also buy bagged salad, fruit etc so you’re getting enough fibre. Morrisons do very reasonably priced bento style boxes in their to go lunch section.

If you’re a meat eater you could buy bagged salad, toms and some precooked meat from the supermarket, you can also heat tinned potatoes by covering them in boiling water.

Is breakfast included? Take a few pieces of bread/croissaint/fruits from there.

Pot noodles, pot pasta, porridge, soup or other "just add water" pot things. You can protein it up with ready cooked meats.

Salads (readymade or make your own), sandwiches, sushi, anything from the baked section.

Cheap chain restaurants, deli counter type places with something to go

Some hotels have microwave in the hall so could do ready meals.

Just adding to the chorus of people who think it’s awful that you’re expected to pay upfront for any of this. Even when I worked for the civil service, and then an otherwise very tight-fisted charity, all of this would have been paid before I left and I could have asked for cash for expenses if needed. Even worse, you say you’re not senior enough for a company card - which implies that those more senior, and therefore earning more than you, would not have to be paying out of pocket for the same trip!

I would speak to your manager about this, and in the long term, I’d look to move jobs. This speaks volumes about the way your employer treats its employees. They don’t care about you - so don’t feel bad about ditching them if you find a better offer.

Someone earlier suggested the too good to go app. This is a great idea take aways often sell off "golden bags" of meals etc if they're not sold by the end of the day for £3/£4. You can't pick what you get but at least it's a hot "proper" meal.

There's a bloke on YouTube who shows all sorts of ways of cooking in hotel rooms....I think he makes toasties using greaseproof paper and the iron!

I agree with PP, you need to be focal with work about this. We used to do similar - pay out of our own pocket and it was reimbursed on the next pay day, but the cut off date for submission often meant you didn’t get it back for 6 or more weeks. I know people who didn’t go to training courses because of this. We now have company credit cards for everyone so no one is ever out of pocket. If they can’t organise that they should be able to give you a cash advance. There’s no way I’d be going hungry or eating junk food to avoid being skint of work’s behalf.

Seems a little odd that your employers aren’t helping you here OP. My employer always used to pay for accommodation in advance, issue me a rail warrant for my ticket and give me cash, from petty cash, all I would need to do is gather the receipts for my meals, taxis etc and then settle it when I got back to the office.

Can’t you speak them them, rather than have to stress about budget and what you can or can’t cook in your hotel room, where your options are limited.

Christ alive, this is so wrong. I was self employed and had to pay upfront for expenses ( sometimes flights!) then wait 6 weeks to be reimbursed but as an employee you shouldn't have to do this.

3 options

Ask for an advance, or at least to be reimbursed at the end of the week.

Use a credit card/ overdraft

Say you can't go as you don't have enough money to cover the expenses as they should ne paying for travel etc up front.

Pot noodle.

Your employer has put you in a very unfair position. Can you not just explain to hom that you can't afford to pay upfront for a weeks worth of hotel meals. There's no way you should be eating snack food and cold meat innyour hotel room every night.

You can tell a high earner drafted the policy on this, its bloody ridiculous to expect people to pay this in advance.

Anyway, when I travel on a budget I take a bag of fruit from home, porridge pots for breakfast, I take extra tea bags and little packs of biscuits from those provided at the meeting/work/training if I can.

Evening meals are a bit harder, especially if lunch was col but it generally includes McDonald's, Domino's personal pizza and salads and nice puds from M&S.

Could you suggest they use something like an Equals card so they provide pre-paid funds that you have to account for with receipts.

@Manchestermummax3 brilliant suggestion!!!

I literally couldn't do this. If I had to travel for work I would need it all prepaid beforehand. We just don't have several £100 left in the budget each month. It horrifies me what firms are expecting of people. Even if you are a high earner, most people tend to spend to their earnings.

You’ll have about £20 a night minus whatever you spend on breakfast, which if it’s porridge pots won’t eat into that much. You could have a main course in a restaurant and tap to drink if you choose carefully. If you’ve budgeted for £100 and will get it back I wouldn’t go short.