To think these lunches are too expensive?

[EssieTregowan]

My two teenagers are currently spending around £5 a day on lunch from the school canteen.

It's a cashless system and unfortunately £5 is the minimum you can set the limit to.

We've said they're not allowed to buy drinks from now on and take water in, so that should help a bit, but I wondered if I'm being tight. We can sort of afford £200 a month on lunches but it means making cutbacks elsewhere.

Do we need to just suck this up, or is this crazy money? It's only recent as DD was taking a packed lunch until a couple of weeks ago and DS has for some reason started eating more at school.

How much do your secondary lunches cost you? Is this about right or am I raising a pair of gannets?

A secondary school lunch is no more than £3 a day. Yes, there are added extras they can buy, like anything else, school meals are a business but a basic two course meal (main and pud OR main and drink) will cost no more than three pound a day.

Extra drinks, biscuits and puds are available for a price, and many secondary schools also have bacon sandwiches/toast available for breakfast or first break (at a cost)

My 14 year old gets £4 a day and that includes £1.80 worth of bus money which he has the choice to walk and buy extra food. More often than not, he skips lunch and grabs something on the way home as he finishes school at 2pm.

Also, I'm a dinnerlady! (Among other things)

My son is at college and he spends about £4.00 a day, I did think he was treating the girls to lunches but when I saw the cafeteria price list I was shocked. He would never take in a lunch, apparently it's not cool

Re drinks - do schools have to provide free access to tap water?

My son school also use a cashless system, they do meal deals that cost £2.10, baguette, snack and a drink or a hot meal and drink, but my son also buys a drink and something to eat at break time so spends another £1.50ish then as well

£3 max any more and they taking a packed lunch. They probably having mid morning snacks

Mine have/had a similar system at school - it can work out quite expensive depending what they buy to eat. The daily "meal deal" at my daughters school is a hot dinner with dessert for around £3 - great value. However, she prefers to join the fastest moving queue in the canteen due to the short lunch break they all have and the same £3 will buy a cookie and milk ( not great value at all ), panini, a half baguette with filling, or a chicken fillet burger. All with a drink. She is perpetually hungry!
My 2 sons ate far more in their school years and a £5 a day didn't begin to cover it! Check to see if you can access the school menu - you may need to pack extra supplies for them.

Yes, I go with majority (I think) and say too expensive. £3 max daily should suffice or back to packed lunches!

With lunch and a morning snack and a drink my 2 sons were easily spending that amount. It was really too expensive. Dh and I don't spend that at work, we take packed lunches and leftovers. Now I've made them take packed lunches at least 3 days a week. They can still buy a snack and lunch on the odd days but now they're very much into taking lunch to school. Now I top up their accounts with only £20 a month

I work in a midlands secondary school and our lunches are a maximum of 2.40 not including a drink. If they get a drink, and get a breaktime snack it comes in at 4.50 per day. Parents can see what their kids are buying too.

I'm work in a school and this is way too much to be spending on lunch each day. Most of ours spend £2-£3 a day. That includes hot dinner drink & pudding plus something at break!
Can you pay in a set amount each week? Limit them to what they spend 😊

Ours have £3 a day (DS's aged 16 and 15) and a packed lunch.

They spend the £3 on a bacon butties or a couple of pizza slices at break.
They are really skinny and meant to be eating around 4000cal a day due to sporting commitments.

DS1 (age 12, secondary school) pays £3 a day which includes a 3 course meal and an orange juice or a yoghurt (London). £5 is really way too much, unless they do some serious exercise!

Ds2 in year 8 spends around £2 a day on a chicken wrap and. cookie, he takes a drink with him.

Ds1 has packed lunches and still has the £30 I put on his card in year 7 minus 1 Christmas dinner. He's in year 9 now! Nothing I say or do can convince that child to spend any money!

£5 is far too much. I'd be livid TBH, just couldn't afford it.

At DDs school toast is 25p, bacon or sausage barms are £1.10, the meal deal (which is a drink and a main meal) is £2.40 according to my payment account. They seem to have dessert type things for around 50-70p and drinks are 30-50p

She doesn't do lunches because she can't cope with the canteen but my account for her lunches (ours is wisepay) shows me literally everything she has spent and everything I've topped up. Those prices are based on what my account tells me eg Bacon barm 1.10, cake 70p etc.

If I gave her £3ish a day she could get a decent main, a drink and a dessert.

To spend £5 she would be having to buy a bacon sandwich and a drink at break then a meal deal, extra drink and dessert at lunch or similar.

Can you log into the payment system and see if it shows you what they are spending it on?

Haven't read the whole thread, but my two cents worth...

I was recently spending £5 a day on lunch on myself, when at work. Like I said, thats £2000 a year! Really bad considering we're trying to save for a house deposit.

So yes, I think its a lot. I now spend about 55p a day on lunch. On a tin of soup.

My (3) kids are all at High School in Scotland and we give them £3 per day for lunch and general small spending. A meal deal is made up of something like a panini plus cake, or pasta "king" (bake or with sauce) and a traybake, or fruit, plus a drink. Cost £2.50. The extra allows them to get a hot chocolate every other day or buy something on the way home. My younger son manages to save quite a bit every month, my older son goes "down the street" and spends everything every week. £5 sounds a LOT.

I would put £15 each week on the card. They can then buy themselves a lunch averaging £3 a day. If they choose to spend it all by Weds, they will have to go hungry or make a sandwich on the remaining days.

A meal deal at our school is 2.50 i think, so we put £15.00 per week on our DC cards. One was regularly going over so I actually rang the school and they said with snacks £5 a day would be about right! Parentpay lets you know exactly what the little darlings have been buying, an in our case (despite repeated warnings) complete crap. They have packed lunches now....

DD is in Uni and here is the menus from her high school before she was home ed, college before she ditched it and uni now. I have the paper copies.

High school -
Jacket Potato with one topping £2.50, £3.00 for 2 toppings
Panini- £2.50
Slice of pizza £1.50
Portion of chips -£1, with gravy £1.50 with beans £2.00
Meal of the day- Fish and chips, Spaghetti and meatballs, pasta bake and garlic bread, curry and rice or chips and popadum, chicken burger no bun and potato wedges. £4.00 EACH! add veg/salad for 20p
Cold Sandwiches (Tuna, Cheese and Onion, Ham salad, Chicken) £2.00
Bag of crisps 70p
Piece of fruit 50p
Flapjack £1
Cookie 75p
Hot dessert with custard £2

College
Soup with bread £2
Panini £3
Toast 50p per slice
Bacon sandwich £1.50
Full breakfast £3.50
Jacket potato 1 topping £2, 2 topping £3
Chips £1, with beans £2
Burger and chips £4
Hot meal of the day £4.50
Portion of veg 50p
Flapjack £1
Ice cream £1
Hot dessert £2.50
fruit 40p

University-
Sausage bap £1.50
Bacon Bap £1.50
Quorn sausage bap £1.50
Hash brown £1
Chips £1.50
Sweet Potato chips £1.50
Soup with bread £2
Half pizza £4
Full pizza £5
Roast dinner £5
salad bar £4
sausage roll £2
cornish pasty £2
cheezy nachos £3.50
hot meal of the day £4
burger and chips £4.50
ice cream £2.50
flapjack £1.50
chocolate bar 70p
bottle of water 70p
pasta salad £2
cold sandwich £2.50
wrap £2.99
Baguette £2.69
falafel and hummus salad £4
carrots and hummus £1.20
fruit pot £1.20
muller corner £1.20
meal deal (sandwich or wrap with crisps or fruit and water or can of coke or juice) £3.50

of course her college and uni both have subways and her uni has a starbucks, pub and costa....

Wowza -5 British Pound equals =$8.10 Australian Dollar-

That's a lot in anyone's money

Pack lunch Mon-Thu here, £5 on a Fri. Ds is 14.

I wouldn't spend £5 on my own lunch. When I don't make my own I buy a Co-op sandwich and a small bottle of water - £2.50 at most. You are being ripped off.

Sounds to me like they are spending it because they have the money available, rather than the prices being that high or really being that hungry. How aware are they of the realities of it i.e. £200 a month on lunches is money that is not available to spend on other things? Have you tried levelling with them about costs and what they are choosing?

If they have to pay lunches out of their pocket money/part-time job money for a week, you might suddenly see the costs falling sharply...

My friends and I usually took packed lunches, only occasionally using the canteen for a hot meal along the lines of chips or sausage roll - not the most healthy but a nice treat in winter. I would imagine these days they have at least some things that are fairly balanced and decent value, along the lines of sandwiches or wraps.

We wouldn't have wanted a full meal daily, and we ended up with more of our lunch break free as not spending ages queuing!

The problem at our school was the amount of money spent at the ice-cream van in the yard (I have no idea why that was allowed!) - hopefully having a cashless system stops things like that.