Taking food from a hotel breakfast buffet- cheeky??

[Nannyogg134]

Was chatting with Brother and SIL about their upcoming holiday. They've got a long drive with 2 young DCs, so they've booked a chain hotel with free buffet breakfast part way along (to break up the drive.) DM said "Oh good, don't forget to make sandwiches for the drive later.".
This led to a whole family breakdown of what it is/isn't cheeky to do at a breakfast buffet 😂...

• DM would happily take tupperware with her and fill up because 'it's been paid for' (I don't think she does take tupperware, I think it was a figure of speech!)
• DH said he's too embarrassed to take anything more than a banana for later.
• DSIL confessed that she can't resist taking pots of jam

I just wondered what everyone thought- Is it unreasonable to take from the buffet breakfast for 'later'?

I’d happily take some fruit and a couple of pastries. Not sure I’d have the guts to pack a full lunch, but good on the people who do! The cost is factored in to the room price so I don’t think there’s any harm caused.

We were staying at a hotel recently and one of the kids needed a packed lunch every day that week. We didn't have a fridge in the room so bought bread and sandwich toppings that didn't need to be refrigerated to make sandwiches, but then topped up the packed lunch with pastries and fruit from the breakfast buffet. I didn't feel great about it but also couldn't figure out how else to get the child to where he needed to be on time and with a packed lunch 🙈

We're clearly terrible human beings though because my DH gets airport lounge access while the rest of us don't, so every time we fly somewhere we send him and one child in to get snacks for all of us for the flight 😅

When the dc were small we’d take a snack for them from the buffet because it was hard to get them to eat enough at breakfast. However, we also had a strict don’t just grab everything because it’s there rule - only take what you are going to eat. You can always get more if you finish it and you are still hungry.

It's breakfast, not lunch. So it's not on (although I have sometimes taken a piece of fruit for elevensies).

But, it's breakfast, not elevensies.

Well, if you could get bread and fillings, surely you could get some crisps and fruit from the same place?

Presumably you could go back for more though

Stops people taking 12 slices of bacon and 8 sausages and then either leaving them or taking them with them in tupperware (or at least makes it harder)

Breakfast isn't factored in to the cost of the room! It's factored in to the cost of breakfast ffs! Hotels in Spain have signs up telling Thieving Piggies not to take food out of the restaurant but you still see Brits wrapping stuff up and poking it in handbags right under the signs. It's disgusting and embarrassing and the staff look at them with contempt.

Well, I'm only going from what parkrun500club has posted, and there's no mention of seconds.

It's table service rather than a buffet.

LOL!!!
We do this. I will keep doing it. And staff have never looked at us with disgust. They could not care less.

Sometimes the bar is set very low

It is so not a just the Brits thing though.

The last hotel we stayed in had nice ham and cheese on the buffet and staff happily made a sandwich for some people going hiking.

No I'm sure it's not but perhaps it's the Brits doing it that I find embarrassing?

For some reason I think taking one item (a piece of fruit or a pastry) is fine but taking more is embarrassing. I can't find any logic behind that.

Yes, we did buy some fruit the first two days. Then we ran out (didn't buy loads as we didn't have a fridge to put them in) so took fruit from the breakfast buffet instead. It was hardly the crime of the century. They also provided fruit in the evenings, so I really don't think they'd mind us taking some extra from the breakfast buffet seeing as they were also giving it away later in the day.

I didn't want my child having crisps with lunch every day. I'm not originally British, crisps isn't a lunch-time thing where I'm from. They don't even sell the small bags of crisps where we were (my home country). If we'd had a fridge we wouldn't even have sent him in with sandwiches, it would have been pasta salads, chicken drumsticks etc.

Don't take too much, take a little and go back if you want more.

Snap - also people who take loads of food from the buffet so they effectively have a buffet on their table so a plate with loads of bread on it, a plate with fruit, a plate with meat which I assume they are all supposed to share. At home you'd put the surplus away and eat it later but the staff can't do that so it all gets thrown. It makes me so irrationally angry I don't know why.

My equally illogical line is that whole “things” are ok (so a pastry or an apple) but that making a sandwich is not. This makes zero actual sense.

I pushed this a bit at Disney by putting a mini roll and some cheese in a a freezer bag and taking them away. For some reason this was ok in my head but combining them at the table into a cheese roll felt verboten. 🤷🏻‍♀️

The harvester do this, order the food, finish, and feel free to order more
I presume it's the same sort of thing?

Crisps was just an example..not suggesting you have it every day.

It seems odd that you use the "excuse" of not being able to get fruit or whatever for lunches, but then go on to say that actually you can and did get lunch food and then just chose to take it from the breakfast buffet anyway.

It's just odd justification to me.

We were at a Hilton in London this year, they had an executive lounge where you got drinks and snacks for an hour and a half in the evening if you had an executive room. A chap was in there each evening, had quite a few glasses of wine - full glasses as you poured yourself so more than you'd get in a bar and then when it got to the end of the 90 minutes he would take 2 takeaway coffee containers, fill them to the brim with red wine and take them off I assume to his room. We could not take our eyes off him.

No, we could, and did, buy it ourselves for the first couple of days. After that we got things like fruit from the breakfast buffet because we weren't able to get more from shops.

It's only an odd justification because you've misinterpreted what I said.

That’s hilarious 🤣🤣 definitely getting his moneys worth!

Yeah so what. So much snobbery.