Would £200 be reasonable for a cooked arrival meal for six?

[zael]

We recently stayed at a holiday cottage. We were arriving late and the owner said the housekeeper is a great cook, so could leave a prepared meal for us. Never done this before.

There were 6 adults. We got left 6 large home made cornish pasties, some vegetables, some potatoes, 6 beers, and a home made victoria sponge. It was yummy.

How much do you think the housekeeper charged us for this?

£200

How much would you expect to have paid?

£120.

I suppose in a hotel you'd pay a lot more for a main, dessert and beer. But then, you'd not need to wash up.

Pastry making is an art. Not everyone has a light hand and the knack.
Here is a recipe:
cornishpastyassociation.co.uk/

Pasties don’t take hour to make. They are (delicious) rough and ready food. They also don’t need top notch meat. That’s not what they are meant to be.

Depends on if you are making a posh pasty for tourists or a normal pasty. Either way, I very seldom find homemade pastry up to scratch.

Edited to add that pastRy with an r is an art. In case anyone skim reads and misunderstands.

I don’t think £200 is unreasonable for this. Freshly made food not supermarket bought. Dinner, dessert, drink. You’re paying for the food but also the preparation and delivery of it, the housekeeper can’t be expected to work for free.
But it was on you to check in advance how much it would be.

Exactly. Just because it takes a lot of time and effort to provide this food, doesn't make it worth the cost.

Tbh, I'd have questioned anything more than about £80, not because I don't value the housekeeper's time, but above that, its not value for money. I'd eat on the way and pick up the beers in any convenience store, if arriving late.

And who's to say the housekeeper actually made the pasties anyway? You can buy frozen, ready to bake, artisan pasties online or from butchers, pasty shops etc if a local, that are effectively home made, ie good quality fresh ingredients, not cheap factory rubbish, so perhaps that's what was supplied here?

If we are going away to a cottage, we order a delivery from Waitrose or Ocado, to arrive shortly after we do, and have a meal that is ready to eat or very easy to prepare. £200 would likely feed us well for pretty much the whole time away.

That sounds delicious and a far better deal than the OP got.

A curry is so much easier than a home made pasty.

Tbh, I'd have questioned anything more than about £80, not because I don't value the housekeeper's time, but above that, its not value for money. I'd eat on the way and pick up the beers in any convenience store, if arriving late

This is a good argument for not asking the housekeeper to prepare a meal. It’s a terrible argument for quibbling the price after the meal has been ordered, prepared and eaten.

OP, these sorts of services always cost a lot of money because you’re asking one person to spend hours shopping and cooking. It’s not comparable at all to the price of a takeaway or a ready meal because there are no economies of scale. It’s proper “blow the budget” territory- not because they’re ripping you off but because it’s inevitably expensive to have what’s effectively a private cook for an afternoon (which is what it would have taken). Put this one down to experience and ask the price in future.

I wondered whether the pasties were actually home made as well… . Got some lovely looking pasties from a bakery in Rye recently that could definitely be passed as homemade, and they were about £4 each.

On that basis -
pastie and veg (and cooking) - £10 each - £60
beer - £3 each - £18
Cake - £20

Total - £98

Even if you allow abit extra, £200 sounds steep.

I'd say £25-35 per head is normal for homemade and it's been delivered, it depends on area prices and distance of delivery etc

I think £200 for homemade food for six is fine. Its not just the food, its the time it took and the convenience.

Obviously the OPs mistake was to not ask how much it was going to cost or what she was going to get. I would have refused that offering because a Cornish pasty with unnecessary veg and potatoes and cake is not a nice sit down dinner.

It's what you'd get from the pasty shop on a day out and even in the 'I saw you coming' tourist shops you'd pay way less than £33 pp.

Plus however great this cook is, pasties are not something that can be improved on, there's a standard recipe so it's not like it's going to be any different to one from a good pasty shop, which are available in abundance in Cornwall.

I was thinking the same.

£32for doing the shopping, veg prep, cooking and clearing up for 6 people? She wasn't doing it as a favour but to make some money. It could easily cost £30 a head in a restaurant serving freshly made high quality food.

If you or your daughter had the cook's/housekeeper's job, what would be a fair hourly rate of pay?

I’m guessing the OP isn’t coming back. But if she does, these are the relevant questions I think we need answered before anyone can say whether it’s good value or not:

1. What were the alternatives in that location at that time? Could she have gone elsewhere or ordered in, or was it this or cook herself/go without hot food?
2. What was actually offered? Just a vague “hot meal”, or was the food specified in advance - and that the pasties and vegetables would be the one and only choice?
3. Were drinks mentioned? Or was the beer each presented as a nice extra?
4. Was the food just cooked and left there to be reheated - and if so, did the housekeeper come back in the morning to clear up, or was the OP expected to do that?

We also don’t what OP thought would be good value. She’s asked us what we’d expect to pay, but we don’t know if she thought this wasn’t a bad deal or highway robbery.

I’m really appalled by the number of people who’ve decided the housekeeper is lying about having made the food based on nothing other than the fact that food is available in shops.

It's what you'd get from the pasty shop on a day out and even in the 'I saw you coming' tourist shops you'd pay way less than £33 pp.

But she didn’t go to a pasty shop?

It’s like booking a private yoga instructor to come to your holiday accommodation for a one-off special class and then quibbling because it costs more than your local leisure centre. OP booked a premium service that’s well known to be expensive, and it turned out to be expensive. No shit.

Id pay that for a nice curry or Lasagne and sides but i dont really like Cornish Pasties, so id have been annoyed. Im assuming the caterer knew the family did though? Still seems over priced though, cause it's are hardly a fancy meal.

It’s like booking a private yoga instructor to come to your holiday accommodation for a one-off special class and then quibbling because it costs more than your local leisure centre

It's nothing like that and you know it. I'm surprised by the number of people happy to pay £33 for a Cornish pasty, cake and a beer. I would pay £33 pp for a nice cooked meal at a holiday cottage, but I would expect just that. A nice cooked meal, something fancy, a bit of a banquet. Not snacks.

I would have checked the price first but the cost isn’t huge. You would have paid similar/more at a restaurant. People deserve to make a living – she’s not cooking for you as a favour. She probably spent a few hours making the meal and then there’s the price of the ingredients.

I feel like there might be a massive North/South divide on this thread. As a Londoner it just doesn't sound out of the ordinary for £33 per head and I certainly wouldn't expect a banquet for that!!

This feels like a low level version of those arguments when someone thinks “How would you feel if it was your daughter?” is a valuable contribution to debates around prison sentences.

It isn’t relevant what the housekeeper is being paid, or whether the OP would work for that rate. That is between the homeowner and the housekeeper. The homeowner has chosen to offer a service that requires her employee’s expertise - it is up to her to price up that service and decide if she can offer it at a price that covers her costs, makes her a profit and is attractive to her customer. It’s then up to OP as the customer to decide whether she thinks that price is worth it, or whether she’ll take an alternative instead (if there is one).