Need to feed 22 people in air bnb for 12 meals

[bessaas]

Need to feed 22 people including 2 kids for summer.

We're having family stay in the UK for 4 days this summer. Everyone is coming in from abroad from really expensive places- Australia, USA, China, except my partner and I- for us its 2 hour drive.

I have rented an Airbnb which we are all splitting the cost of. Everyone is paying for their own flights.

We are however paying for all food as our contribution. Everyone is paying at least a grand for their flights.

We completely underestimated the cost of food. Professional caterers for four meals for four days have quoted £8k. We were originally thinking £1500 as a budget and feel we may have messed up.

The air bnb is 5 self catering cottages all grouped with separate kitchens.

Were thinking one professional meal catered. Three course. For that it will be £900. It was £850 for buffet so we thought may as well go sit down three course.

We are needing 4 breakfasts, 4 lunches, and 4 dinners total. Others can help cook but we are footing the bill. We invited everyone so it makes sense.

without giving away what were doing we will be onsite the whole time but not have a load of time to cook. So we can't have a plan that will take more than 45m from start to food on the table.

We have thought : continental breakfast all four days, sandwich platters for lunch. one lunch be sandwich platters and scones so 'afternoon tea' and bbq for dinner.

Are there any other quick and inexpensive meal options we can do?

We also looked at hiring a food truck but for so few people it was £25 a pizza.

I’m intrigued to know what you will be doing onsite, apart from preparing food,
eating and clearing up afterwards! It’s optimistic to only allow 45minutes from start to food on table!

Another vote for Cook here! We've used them when we've gone away with family. They are not cheap, but much less expensive than getting in professional caterers. Marks and Spencer and Waitrose also do prepared food that would be good for lunches.

I wasn’t being serious, it’s just what I would do if I ever ended up in OP’s position (something that will never happen). I hope OP manages to have some fun in between all her mass catering duties.

I catered for 30 people for 2 nights at my house for my hen do. I did trays and trays of buffet food in those plastic catering trays, cold pizzas, chicken drumsticks, sandwiches sausage rolls vegetables fruit etc. Bought loads of frozen pizzas, did a giant chilli in a couple of slow cookers with jacket potatoes that I just stacked in the oven. Cold pasta dishes and trays of sandwiches for lunches. Then we ordered a dominos which was about £350 to feed everyone and we still had leftovers. I think I spent about £1000 overall on food for 3 days.

I’d invest in some catering trays and foil containers from home bargains and prepare as much as you can in advance so all you have to do is heat it up.

Hotdogs! (Vegan or otherwise.)
Onions (could be roasted in the oven), rolls, ketchup, mustard etc. I once helped at an event where many, many hotdogs were prepared, and as they only needed heating in a (albeit massive) stockpot with water, everything went smoothly. (Obviously check they are of the variety that are ok to be heated this way.)

Just get cereal, toast and jam for breakfast. That’s one less meal to focus on. I wouldn’t be offering to cater for 2 meals a day every day. Maybe just one of the days. You’ll be paying more than others did for flights.

Lidl for croissant and pastry type things.

porridge yoghurt and bagels of frozen fruit

Ah that makes sense! Thanks for explaining.

Costco said publicly that they’re not going to change or cancel their DEI programmes. (Diversity, equality, inclusion - like affirmative action for hiring and promotions etc). The MAGA crowd are angry!

Can you get delivery? Is inside you could get that much curry for £200. Sometimes butchers do bbq packages where they deliver bbq, coal and meat. Do you know anyone with a wholesale catering business, or a business who could register for membership? Wholesalers stock catering size joints and lasagnes

I think this is a serious consideration. I get the logic that they've all had to lay out money that you haven't because of the flights, but you shouldn't end up then paying more. Work out what you can offer up to the level of the flight payments and say to family you'll need to jointly fund anything else and agree where to eat out, get takeaway or whatever.

I would get another quote for a start.

approach small independent cafes. Search Facebook for shooting party caterers.

that’s a ridiculous amount and I am sure worth another look.

if that fails, echo others, supermarkets like m and s do catering size meals.

Be careful you don’t end up not enjoying it as a result.

Don't forget that you've offered to pay for all the food, not do all the cooking.

There is a bit of a difference. 😂

Oh nicely done Costco. Nicely done

Haven’t read the whole thread but The Batch Lady is what you need. Batch cook and freeze ahead, take it with you frozen and defrost as you need to. She does everything from breakfast to lunches to dinners. She has done videos about catering for a house full on holiday

This. You are paying for the food as you won't have to pay for air fares but you dont have to personally provide a hotel all inclusive service for every family. Surely they know what food they would want to eat, everyone likes different things. Get everyone to plan and cook for themselves. You arrange the supermarket delivery for each cottage and pay for it but they plan and cook.

That's a much better plan.

The alternative is that you will hardly spend any time with the people who flew all this way to see you. You'll spend all your time preparing and cooking food. If you prep as much as possible in advance you'll be exhausted by the time you get there and struggle to have enough fridge/freezer space to store it. It has disaster written all over it.

To answer your breakfast question, I always have a toasted bagel or else toasted white bread and a boiled egg for breakfast, and 2 coffees. Dh almost always has porriage with fruit and nuts, oj and coffee.
I suggest stocking each cottage with breakfast foods, tea, coffee and hot chocolate, biscuits and couple of other beverages like ginger ale (if somebody has upset stomach one day) and bottled water.

I’d focus on customisable so everyone gets what they want and are well fed. I’m just guessing there might be children involved and they may have different palates being from such far flung places.

Breakfasts - provide each house with bread, butter, jam, cereal/muesli, milks, yoghurt, basic fruit bowl for diy breakfasts.

Lunch - baked potatoes and trimmings, toastie bar (bread, cheese, meat, chutneys, side salads), salad bar (2x grains, 2x proteins, 2x dressings veggies each house can chop), burrito bar (rice, protein, cooked up veg, salsa, guac, cheese)

Dinner - as suggested do 1 night of Cook ready meals, 1 night bbq, 1 night make your own pizzas, 1 night of catering

Why is all food served as a 'bar' all of a sudden, where did that come from?

@BlueJayRose porriage sounds very posh 🤔😀

Naice porriage?

Good thinking 👍🏻 and they do sandwiches platters, huge cakes etc

Logistically if you go for preprepared stuff you will easily hit the £40 online delivery minimum spend, so you could schedule multiple deliveries - that would save on fridge space.

You could also premake some stuff like for example a pasta sauce - that would then make a lasagne take 10 minutes to put together.

Anything like fajitas, burritos, sandwich station is easy to do in bulk you can just substitute halloumi for meat for a veggie option.

Find out if there is a freezer because then you can take frozen chopped veg, again it all saves time 😊

It's easy. You have a kitchen. You have 20 adults. Everyone takes a couple of nights each and you just do large portions.

Chorizo and orzo with peppers and onions - fry off your onions and peppers, chop up your chorizo and cook, add passata and then throw in the cooked orzo. It's basically an easy version of paella.
Fajitas. Always easy and quick.
Frozen pizza night
Katsu Curry with rice and cabbage - Buy frozen chicken goujons and wack them in the oven for half an hour - add katsu curry sauce, microwave the rice and thinly shred cabbage. Easy peasy.
Korean hotpot - couple of pans of boiling water, add really spicy instant noodles. Have a bunch of thinly sliced meat and veg (you can buy a lot of the veg prep prepared anyway). Throw in. Takes a couple of mins to cook. You can top up with more meat and veg and noodles and keep going rather than serving everyone at once. Very simple.
Stir fry. Beans sprouts, preprepared veggie, noodles and sauce (as found together in Asda, Sainsbury's or Tesco's). Takes minutes.
Curry night. Just order in one night.
Cheesy sauce pasta with bacon and salad. Buy prepared where you can.
Hotdogs and fries. Hotdogs take five mins. Add tinned chilli or other toppings if you want to make it a bit more than a boring hotdog.
Pressure cooker or slow cooker - pulled pork. Super easy.
Thai green curry.

Honestly these dishes are super easy if you are prepared properly in advance and think about it. You have many hands to make light work.

Breakfast - What's wrong with toast and cereal?

I regularly have a very short window to cook in or cater for twentyish.

Spag bol I'd actually say is a faff and time consuming. I personally wouldn't do it.

I would do a BBQ one night if you do have the time.

I absolutely wouldn't even consider a caterer.

Breakfasts get a supermarket delivery of stuff for each property to sort themselves.

Evenings - do Cook meals twice - eg a lasagne night and a meat and potatoes night (lamb shanks or chicken-y with a veg sub).
Make your own pizza using Crosta Mollica bases one night.
Catered one night (if you're sure - otherwise go fancy on one of the Cook nights and do a big pasta or tagine for the other one. Catered uses up a massive chunk of budget).

Make sure supermarket delivery includes stuff for snacks and basic sandwiches.

Lunches - quiches, salads, sandwich station, jacket pots, focaccia, soup and rolls.

Are you sure you won't be going out somewhere offsite for one or more of the days/evenings?