Kids party. Do we buy in or cater? Ideas & suggestions needed.

[maldivemoment]

Birthday in the garden for daughter’s 11th birthday. Will put the gazebo up.
Around 10 or so friends coming after school.

I’m pretty good at catering for a crowd of friends but feel a bit stumped with this one! Am I overthinking it?

option 1 is we buy in a load of pizzas from local place.

option 2 is we provide the food. It’s a work day for me so limited as to how much I can do on the day.

Anyone got any fool proof ideas?
Loads of sandwiches?
Home made sausage rolls?
Bite sized stuff? Mini sausages/vol au vents, etc?

Im over thinking it, aren’t I?

Pizzas
Crisps
Ice-cream

👍🏻

Def pizza. Especially if it's a work day and you'll be short on time

Pizza. By the time you’ve bought a load of food and drink and faffed around making it there won’t be much difference in cost and they’ll like take away pizza more.

Pizza bought in, then augmented with bowls of crisps/nibbles, biscuits, little cakes. What does your DD think?

Chicken nuggets and fries? I like the pizza idea too always go down well at parties

Yes I would go with pizza and some desserts. Maybe another option should a child not like pizza. Or ask in advance if the children like pizza. I've spent a fortune doing a buffet for a party thinking I would save money but it's worked out more expensive

Bit of both is probably the way to go. Pizzas with some plates of sandwiches / crisps / whatever

Costco platters

Deffo pizzas and sides like chicken goujons. Can get really good deals on domino’s or papa johns- probably cheaper.
Then a selection of magnums, cornettos etc for dessert.

Thanks all!
pizza & sides it is 👍🏻

It sounds like you're good with pizza and certainly, it's a great option. But just as a note, we have a gas BBQ so if we have a crowd of kids to feed we often just slap burgers and sausages on the BBQ. It's a great way to quickly, and relatively cheaply, feed loads of people.