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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

What to feed 30 x 5 years olds on a tight budget

79 replies

Ontheperiphery79 · 21/01/2023 22:23

I know it's not an AIBU, but DC bday party next weekend; I need to provide food on a shoestring.
They'll be eating at 13:30 and the venue allows 30 mins in the party room with no flexibility. They'll be very active for the hour preceding this.
Please throw some ideas my way re: what to feed and how best to present it. There are 30-ish of the little darlings to feed.
Help!

OP posts:
cravingtoblerone · 22/01/2023 10:28

Kids eat very little at parties in my experience so don't overthink it. The only things they tend to really dive on are pizza and crisps. But keep pizza slices finger-food size.

Sleepless1096 · 22/01/2023 10:51

Jam and cheese sandwiches. Cheap bread, one pot of basic jam, value block of cheddar. Around £5-6. Marmite if you want to spend even less.

Biscuit platters with own brand biscuits... choc chip cookies, custard creams, bourbons. Maybe add some party rings to jazz things up. You can get cheap biscuits at 40-50p per pack. So 10 packs should be around £5 and enough for 30 kids.

Own brand squash... 2 double/quadruple strength bottles should be plenty for 30 kids (around £3).

Carrot sticks. You can get 1kg of carrots for 50p. If you add cucumber sticks, that's an extra £1.20 (around 60p per cucumber).

Fruit bowl? Put in apples, oranges and bananas. Looks healthy but the kids will barely touch it and you can take the fruit home and use for snacks/packed lunches for the next week.

A couple of cheap traybakes (£6-7 each).

Ontheperiphery79 · 22/01/2023 16:38

Thanks so much to everyone for all the suggestions.
I love all the cheap and cheerful suggestions and I'll head to the supermarket when I am child free later in the week.
I think I was overthinking it and will keep it simple.

OP posts:
Teenagehorrorbag · 22/01/2023 16:55

Really don't do individual bags - it means far more waste as you don't know what each child likes to eat.

Happy Meals........if you're a millionaire Grin

Otherwise - as I said earlier in the thread, don't overdo it. A very few sandwiches, some mini sausage rolls, crisps and chocolate brownies would be fine. A friend spent hours making healthy fruit kebabs for a party and they were all left! Make life easy on yourself....Smile.

I did buy separate dairy free for one child that I knew had allergies - if you have time you could ask?

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