To question how much a prom venue wants to charge per head for non-eating members of staff?

[Ginmere]

This isn't as much as an AIBU as a -has anyone heard of this?

I work at a secondary school and have got a prom booked for the end of the month. There are about 160 students attending and around 40 staff. The venue quoted £20 per head for the students for buffet food and unlimited soft drinks all night. No problem with that but..... have now said that they charge £20 per head for all attendees whether they eat or not!!!' In other words they want £20 per head per staff member attending who won't eat the buffet food and will buy their own (mainly alcoholic but not to get drunk drunk) drinks at the bar.

Is this normal? Has anyone heard of this, we are thinking it is pretty shocking to be fair 😳 but it is mainly a wedding venue so wondering it they are right?

Im organising our Yr11 prom as im HOY 11 this year. Ours is £29 pp! That includes dj, red carpet etc but still, not really an event for me.

I’m a secondary teacher. Year 11 form tutors are on duty and thus get prom for free. The rest of us pay for our ticket.

I suspect they are thinking that staff will eat mostly. But I doubt the venue will be headcounting unless you are all seated on a plan? I would suggest staff are told that the venue is providing food and soft drinks to staff and it's £x, and sneak in a few extras

So the party is for 200 and you're asking them to only cater for 160? That's really odd and I'm surprised a business would agree to that tbh.

Are parents attending too?

£20 is very reasonable. I would expect anyone who's attending as a celebration of 5 years of crazy to pay- child or staff. Totally different if they are on duty. I'd also expect the venue to want to charge however many people as are attending.

Are the school going to pay for the teachers? I think they should do and you might as well get them to cater for 200.

I find these venues can short change you on buffet food anyway.

Most venues have an overall total spend for the room. So to accommodate all students and staff, they need to charge each person, otherwise they won't reach the total amount required. So for example a rooms target is £5000 and can hold 500 people. So that is £100 per person. If only 400 people paid and all 500 attended then the room is losing money and will probably have turned away other groups who would have paid in full.

This would put me off going tbh. Proms are lovely but whether or not you are officially "on duty", you're always on duty if you're a member of school staff there.

Staff don't tend to eat at prom, the foods grim. The kids barely eat either so it's a just a lot of wasted food all round.

Paying £20 to give up a Friday evening and spend it with teenagers is not my idea of fun.

As a pp said, the staff will buy their own drinks, unlike the students. This more than covers their share I think. Would the venue really want 160 teenagers and skeleton staff?!

*£10!!!

It shouldn’t matter if the staff eat from the buffet! You have asked them to cater for 160 students. The food is therefore the food. Doesn’t matter who eats it it will still be the same amount of food!

I can see why the venue doesn't want it to work like this. If 160 people's worth of food gets split between 200 people it won't cost the venue anything extra then and there, but it'll be them who gets the bad word of mouth reputation when the teens go home and tell their parents that 'we paid £20 for food and then there was barely anything!'.

Has anyone heard of this, we are thinking it is pretty shocking to be fair 😳 but it is mainly a wedding venue so wondering it they are right?

They are right, as it is their venue and they can charge what they want.

Well firstly the staff might as well eat as you are having to pay for them whether they eat or not.

I presume you are not charging the children who attend £20 on the nose, you charge them a bit more due to insurance etc, as is standard practice.

So what usually happens is, say 200 children are going and you need 10 staff and insurance is £100.

You calculate it as:

200 x 20 = £4000
10 x £20 = £200
1 x £100 = £100
Then divide £4500 by 200 and charge each student £22.50

Our y11 prom is free for staff. In a swanky country hotel too.

Our sixth form prom is £35 a head for all attendees. I don't go to that as I don't want to pay for something where I'm expected to supervise hold girls' hair back as they puke

I'm going out for the evening now so will quickly try to answer questions

No parents are going

The venue is a country pub with a marquee in the grounds. Teaching staff are there to celebrate with their students off their own back. Pastoral/leadership supervise. We thought that on a Wednesday night the venue would be happy to have 40 staff buying drinks on top of a brown buffet for teenagers. The additional per head cost has been announced this week by the venue so has come as a surprise.

I think we will have to say to them to feed the staff as well - that seems to be the general consensus.

But keep the responses coming and I'll check up again later

Incidentally, while I can see the point of view of the venue you might as well try and negotiate it down if that's what you want. They either will or won't concede, depending on how much they want your custom. It's going to depend on whether they think they're realistically going to have other takers for that space that night. 200 people of whom only 160 are paying for food and only 40 are drinking is a pretty terrible prospect for a venue - unless the alternative is an empty room. So it's quite hard to predict how accommodating they'll be, but it's worth a try.

Surely it depends on what was agreed in the contract when youbbooked?

I’m not sure whether this is usual practice or not, but if it is - it’s greedy on the part of the hotel. In essence they are asking you to pay £20 just to walk through their door. They will be benefitting from your attendance anyway as you will be buying your own drinks from what I expect will be a bar with over inflated prices.
If they want you to pay £20 I think you’d be justified in asking them to provide a buffet with unlimited soft drinks for 200 rather than 160.
I got the impression that there are a few posters on here who think it’s wrong that non paying teachers might benefit from a buffet that the students (parents) have paid for. Are you honestly begrudging
them a slice of pizza and whatever else might be included? For every student that loads up their plate there will be another who doesn’t take anything so I don’t see that any paying student will be deprived.

Without putting a damper on things I can’t believe the buffet will be anything to write home about anyway especially as unlimited soft drinks are included - I’d like to know what they call a soft drink - I’d be worried that a hotel so hung up on cost that they want to charge for entry to teachers will only be providing weak fruit squash!

I

Yeah the fact that the vast majority of the guests won't be drinking means it won't be very profitable for the venue, even if they do change for the teachers as well.

It's a year 11 celebration, the staff are their teachers, pastoral staff etc so always attend to celebrate the end of GCSEs and their school life

Well are they celebrating or supervising? If they’re celebrating too then surely they pay their way and they can join in with the buffet. 40 free places is an awfully big ask.

Prom costs here (up north) are £39 per head this year for yr11 so I expect we are covering staff but I don't have an issue with that.

I got the impression that there are a few posters on here who think it’s wrong that non paying teachers might benefit from a buffet that the students (parents) have paid for. Are you honestly begrudging
them a slice of pizza and whatever else might be included? For every student that loads up their plate there will be another who doesn’t take anything so I don’t see that any paying student will be deprived.

This is not about teachers and begrudging them a slice of pizza. This is about business. The venue is being asked to feed and water potentially 200 people but are only being paid for 160. Why should they? Yes ostensibly the buffet is only for 160 people but maybe they don't want the hassle of enforcing that students-only buffet.

Staff don't expect to eat at prom! We buy drinks and supervise (both officially and unofficially). The venue are cheeky to expect £20 for nothing.

The venue is a country pub with a marquee in the grounds.

So they had to rent a marquee for 200 instead of 160? I'm assuming you'll need the toilet at some point so will be using the facilities?

To all the people saying staff should pay - do you pay to attend work functions you’re expected to attend? Yes it’s a celebration but ultimately as a staff member you are there for work and expecting people to pay is a bit much in my book. Likewise, expecting the school to pay is a poor use of public funds. The best thing to do is split the cost between the students, but if they’ve already paid (likely, given how close to the end of year it is) you can’t charge them an extra fiver a head at this point.