Live out nannies and food

[Gangle]

Just wanted to check what nannies' expectations are with regards to their employer supplying food for meals during the working day. Just employed a new nanny and she seems to be getting through a fair amount of food! Our old nanny always bought her own meals - we never asked her to and I would have been more than happy for her to use whatever was in our cupboards to make herself meals or to eat whatever the children are eating, it just turned out that way. I didn't specifically discuss this with our new nanny and am of course happy for her to eat whatever the children are eating but am just realising that this actually pushes the cost of food up a fair amount, especially if she is eating lunch and dinner at ours. What do other nannies do? She is on £400 net per week for a 4 day week, 8-6.30.

Our nanny does 8 till 6 and has lunch at our house but goes home for dinner. For lunch she likes sandwiches and salad and so on, so I get that sort of stuff in.

Some lunches I've had this week:

2 sausages with carrots, peas, mashed potato and onion gravy.

Macaronni Cheese with cucumber

At the moment I finish before 5pm so dinner is often snack based, so can be had shortly after eldest child gets home from school - so bread, meat, veg, fruit all in easy to eat by hand form. If I'm doing a cooked dinner for the children then I like to have some to try to get them to copy eating. If working a longer day, I'm more likely to have dinner - possibly due to there being more time available and thus more likely to be a cooked meal.

Gangle - not sure what you are trying to establish... is it the quantity of food?

Have you looked at what things in particular have increased in cost? Is it down to certain ingredients being used which are costly to start with?

Feeding more people does cost more money. As we are doing a new example calculation of the costs of employing a nanny, maybe useful if you are able to say how much of an increase in cost you have noticed.

only worked one day last week but had jacket pot,tuna and salad

as did my 2.5yr charge

i used to eat breakie at work but now as i literally get to work, grab dc and do school run i either have a healthy snack bar or have breakie at 9am

b cereal/fruit/toast
l pasta/soup/jacket/sandwich etc

how much is she eating?

must be lots if you are noticing it

Sounds more of an issue with the amount she's eating?

We used to have a Nanny and she was welcome to eat here, she did most lunchtimes here and would quite often cook enough dinner for the little ones to take some home with her.

Didn't notice any difference in food costs.

I eat 3 meals at work each day (14hr day). I eat what the lo eats. It does add up to a fair amount i guess - but thats more because my employers want their child to eat all organic food. I shop online for just the 2 of us each week - and spend ~£40-£50. That's including juice and tea (herbal & peppermint) for me, snacks for lo. (I provide all my own snacks)

Some weeks are cheaper as i have lots of frozen portions or meat/fish in the freezer - depends if my employers eat extra portions or not the previous week.

If you are happy for your nanny to eat at work it may work better if you stipulate which meals are ok to have there (ie if she doesn't start till 8 then i'd expect her to have b-fast at home), and maybe give her a weekly food budget.

If i have money left over from my budget then we may eat out one meal. Again this may be something you want to think about.

I have the opposite problem - nanny is welcome to eat and I've asked her what she would like me to get in for her but she doesn't eat very much and I'm worried she'll get hungry!

My nanny is welcome to eat breakfast and lunch with us

If she is staying late to babysit she has dinner

She does seem to exist on Slim fast and tuna sandwiches!

I ask her every so often if I should buy anythig specific for her

When I worked approximately 8-6 I would only have lunch at work. If I was babysitting past 8ish I would eat dinner there too.

when i was a nanny i typically worked 7.30 - 6

I ate all my 3 meals with the children, same as what the children were having.

sometimes MB might might a huge portion of casserole of something at the weekend and alwayd left enough for me and the children.
Other times id make a big casserole type thing and always made enough for the parents tto have some for their dinner too.

Im not fussy and would never expect my bosses to buy anything different for me.

Ok, thanks, very helpful. I don't think she is eating that much, apart from juice and biscuits which seem to be going down rapidly, it's just that we never tend to have much in the cupboards, e.g. 1 carton of juice, which she'll tend to get through in a day. I also don't eat meat so only buy meat and fish for DSs so I do need to up what I buy as I am buying for another adult. I tend to exist on pasta and toast so have maybe forgotten what a normal person eats in a day!