To not do food at a 6 yr old birthday party?

[yellowgecko]

I’m organising a village hall party on a Saturday, 2pm-4pm. The plan is to do a kids disco, and put out bowls of sweets and crisps, do the cake towards the end and give everyone a party bag on leaving.
I think we’ll end up with around 25 kids. I’m just fed up of going to parties and seeing all the food waste!

AIBU - yes you need to do a buffet / proper food
YANBU - snacks are fine, no one will starve

When my kids had parties we always supplied food. The kids seemed to love all sitting round a table, chattering and eating then singing happy birthday when the cake came out.

I remember the parties I went to as a kid way back when, and they always had food.

If you do this they will constantly snack and eat while running around and be distracted from the games.. not to mention the mess they will make. Much better to give them all a food break around halfway through.. a chance to calm down, have a drink etc… and contain all the mess in one place that you can scoop up into bin bags.

I agree, there is always a lot of food waste at a kids party, they are too busy playing to bother to eat. I'd maybe chuck in some pizza though

My children get STARVING at birthday parties. It doesn’t matter even if I force feed them a protein snack right before we walk in, within half an hour they are hovering around for food. They burn off so much energy.

@ThereIsSomethingWrongWithTheLeftFilange Couldn’t agree more.

I don't see the problem if the party takes place between 2 and 4. They will have had lunch and it's not dinner time.
Snacks only and drink sounds perfect to me. They aren't going to want much more at that time
One of my grandchild had a party like this at a similar age and it worked fine.

Hot dogs! We never have food waste. Just cook 1 per person and have a couple of spare tins you can pop in if people want more. Brioche buns are always popular with them and tomato sauce. We usually check for vegetarians and we’ll do vegan/ vegetarian sausages if necessary

My 6 year old has a fairly substantial snack at 3.30 everyday (sandwich, hummus veggies etc). I would be surprised if a party didn’t have food. I’d just do sandwiches, some savoury snacks, fruit and cake. I would also generally have biscuits etc for the adults but I don’t think it’s an expectation.

I think if your invite said snacks then that's fair enough but maybe rethink the actual snacks and have them sit down for cake in the middle - they will get really over-excited if they are just running around in circles for 2 hours without reset time.

I like doing boxes of individual items so they can just bring it home if they don't eat it there. I used to do a box with crisps, a small chocolate something, a wee pack of sausages, cheese string, a clementine for them to ignore but made me feel better, and a drink.

What is it with the children’s birthday party posts? Yes, you provide food, even if it is just a snack based buffet (and let parents know this on the invitations) plus cake.

And yes, to sum up all the other threads - you take a gift for the host child; you do not take uninvited siblings expecting them to eat/take part; yes, you reply promptly to invitations to accept/decline and do not turn up if you didn’t respond; if you are organising you give a deadline for replies and, whilst it is a pain, you chase up non-replyers once and advise that no reply will be considered a decline; you generally don’t issue gift directives (eg. no plastic/boxed toys) as this is a bit naff and controlling; you generally provide a party bag or departure gift even if this is a £1 sticker book and some haribos; if parents are required to stay (soft play, or in your home/remote village hall or kids are under 5’s) it is thoughtful to offer them a drink; and no, it does not need to cost £1000 a pop.

Hopefully we’ve covered everything now …

I would just put on the invite - there will be some light snacks, nothing substantial, please let me know if your child has any allergies or food intolerances etc etc

People don’t do hot meals at kids parties. They put finger food out.

I think that’s absolutely fine, I would need to feed mine before and after a party at that time so snacks is a good idea.

I think if it's clear on the invitation it's fine and can everyone can prepare.

I think it's totally fine just to provide snacks if it's 2–4pm. If you're worried just say on the invite that you're not doing "proper" food. From the parties I've been to where there has been eg pizza etc, most of the kids are too overexcited to sit and eat more than a few bites anyway, so a lot is wasted, as you say.

What I would do is have something for them to drink—even if it's just a couple of big jugs of water or squash. They'll get thirsty with all the running about/general mayhem.

Hope they all have a great time!

Yeah, sorry. 100% bad idea.

If you put bowls of sweets out, some of the children would just stand beside them and eat them all, probably then be sick, and then they’ll be nothing left for the others. The crisps will probably just get trodden into the floor and shoved into peoples faces as they’re running around.

Unless you’ve got a disco entertainer who is REALLY GOOD or you’re planning some party games like pass the parcel or musical chairs et cetera the kids will get bored after about half an hour of just dancing and will start to whinge or misbehave.

Even if mine had had a good lunch, after a couple of hours of running around and dancing, they’ll probably be starving by about 3.30 and need some tea. Or as above whinging, misbehaving and arguing would take place.

I also agree with the previous poster that part of the idea of having food at a party for young kids is to make them sit down for 10 minutes, have a drink (otherwise they simply won’t drink for the entire time) and also have a bit more of a calm environment where they can chill out and then do the birthday cake.

if you don’t want food waste why don’t you just do the crisps and then have a couple of pizzas delivered or cook them on site (you may need to check whether someone needs one that’s dairy free) and put some crudités out? Then you can freeze any pizza that’s left over and in reality who’s gonna lose sleep over half a cucumber and a few carrots?

Sweets go home with the kids!

Wouldn't that put her off dinner assuming it would be 5ish?

OP you need to do some food, if they are dancing they will be hungry, as others have said pizzas and sausage rolls, a drink of juice will not be a massive cost, the food time will give them time to chat. As a child I didn't go to a party without food being served. Also as suggested don't serve sweets, the number of children with allergies is massive. If they run around or dance full of sweets you will need how to handle choking. Have little bags so they can take a slice of cake home.

Yes, I did for all parties as it was the expectation at the time but at the reception age up to about 7, lots of children were not wanting to sit down and certainly weren't particularly fussed. Older junior school years, yes the parties tended to be be pizza restaurants with an activity prior and it was definitely part of party then as I suppose it was more grown up. That said, the poster who said it regulates the behaviour may have a point as i think there are often two camps of DC, the ones charging around and the others who are quieter and I suspect the food is a bit more inclusive for that kind of personality.

I do sealed things that people can take home or can be used for lunchboxes/snacks if not used..so cheese strings, yoghurt tubes, packets of cookies, packets of crisps. I do normally do a platter of sandwiches for the kids though and a big tub of Iceland brownies (they are so good!!) or something for the parents. I usually end up with very little remaining tbh though

No that's weird.

Just give them a lunchbox each - that's what we did. Then they can take home whatever they don't eat. Less waste, less mess - easy peasy.

My daughter went a party, similar time, and she was absolutely fuming they had no proper food, she spoke about it for months and months, told me when it’s her party we must have food !

the parents put out like cupcakes, crisps etc and all the kids just kept coming back for snacks so they were clearly hungry.

I have 3 children and have been to many, many parties, ranging from a 9am start, to an 8pm finish.

I have never attended a party that has not provided food for the children. Not once.

If you don’t want to do food, then don’t. But please let the parents know because I would imagine most of them will have given their children a late breakfast/early lunch on the reasonable assumption that food would be provided and by around 3pm, those kids are going to be hungry.

We deliberately did a 1-3.30pm party for my 6yo so that we didn't have to provide lunch this year.
I provided plenty of fruit, some crisps, bread sticks and hummus and we did the cake at the party rather than sending it home in party bags.

It worked out really well, I did let the parents know in advance that there would only be snacks. It was only a small party but they were all happy with this arrangement and a couple thought it was a good idea. We went to another party that did the same, so much less stressful and they got to enjoy more playing rather than being dragged away from the fun to eat half a ham sandwich

You do need to do food :) have like chips and nuggets or if the place has food