Pastries at breakfast - you also help yourself to a couple right?

[tanstaafl]

Let me say this is lighthearted.

We’re on holiday , Tenerife, half board.

As we’re leaving breakfast we take a couple of the pastries to enjoy later in the day usually after the afternoon’s sunbathing.

It’s not just us is it?
As it happens we did see someone making up rolls with ham and cheese this morning but we’ve never gone that far!

I agree. Nothing wrong with a pastry but I don’t do the whole lunch thing (I like to go out to the local town for lunch). If the hotel doesn’t mind though then it’s not an issue. If it was issue they’d probably put notices up. Perhaps they would prefer that to wasting good food.

I worked briefly in a cafeteria and the amount of perfectly good, unsold food that was chucked in the bin made me not want to work there anymore. I had to do the throwing away and I found it painful, knowing how many people would have been grateful for it (not this scenario of course, but I hate unnecessary food wastage).

I think it's tacky. You've paid for breakfast, not lunch, not dinner, not snacks. Breakfast.

A hotel in Europe I stayed in last week had a sign on display requesting guests didn't take anything from the buffet table. There was no reason but presumably the management knew that the more it happens, the more food they have to provide and then costs go up.

Fair enough if you don’t actually eat any breakfast and just have drink while other people eat, otherwise it’s really cheap. Imagine the extra amount required if everyone just took ‘a bit extra’?

We absolutely do this. Every time. One of my sunny holiday favourite rituals is enjoying said pastry on my subbed late morning with a lovely cup of coffee. Basically second breakfast. I've paid for it so I don't feel bad.

What does boil my piss are guests who pile their plates high and encourage their kids to do the same then leave half of it. Wasteful fuckers.

We love the hotels with self service mini pancakes machines, so we can make a batch for our toddler to eat in the car on our last day!
He gets very distracted when eating outside the house and never eats enough, only to scream that he is staaaaarving 30 min into 9h drive home...

Then I can’t see an issue with taking a couple of pastries to eat later. For the po faced people slyly observing you, you could put them on a plate on the table for a while to reassure them you had initially intended on eating them there and then.

The first time I went to the US (Florida) my mouth was literally gaped at how high people piled their plates. Then on top of all the savoury food would be a pile of sweet food (literally on top). That was one place you couldn’t help but notice people’s plates, they were like mini skyscrapers lol. No idea if they took any out with them and wouldn’t have cared if they did.

People do this sometimes for a family member who is unwell or busy with something. So the whole family got ticked off the list but one of them got a plate into the room rather then coming for a breakfast.

I don't see a problem with a couple of small pastries and often do. We never eat much at breakfast compared to other guests I've seen.

Which means they’re then either throwing perfectly good food into the trash rather than having it eaten away from the dining area - which is awful - or a load of pastries which other people have fingered and squashed are going back onto the buffet for other unsuspecting guests. Choose your own adventure!

Or possibly free dibs for staff at the end?

The pastries are from breakfast. Was this a big AI hotel or more a boutique one?

Just ask the staff if it's ok to take extra for later then you will know whether it's acceptable to do or not in that particular hotel.

Somewhere in the middle, maybe leaning towards the boutique end, but it doesn't matter to me what type of hotel it is.

Maybe. Though in a hotel where management are overzealous enough to have staff confiscating food from guests, my bet is on it being more about having an eye on costs and reusing that food rather than doing so in order to “treat” the staff to what they confiscate.

What your paying for is all you can eat in one sitting.

Not all you can eat in one sitting plus a picnic lunch.

A pastry is ok though. The pastries at these buffets are usually smaller than normal and there’s often a load of them on display. Having a small pastry but eating it outside rather than at the table is no big deal.

It's tacky and tight. You want a pastry, mid-morning? Cough up a few euro's and buy one.

A big sprawling AI hotel isn’t going to mind a pastry being eaten outside instead of at the table. I’ve never encountered one anyway. When the kids were younger I’d put a few small pastries on a plate for them to share. Any left would be taken back with us. Waste not want not.

Stuffing a ton of them in your bag might be but having one pastry you've technically already paid for is fine in a big AI hotel. Would it make that much difference if I put it on a plate on the table first then changed my mind about eating it so wrapped it in a napkin and took with me.

I'd be more worried about a hotel that re uses uneaten pastries on the buffet for the next morning's breakfast!

I take a few back to the table to have with a coffee after the savoury stuff. If I don't eat them I take them with me. I wouldn't go up when leaving and load up though. No.

The people that I judge ar breakfast are the ones that load their plates up, have a massive fruit platter and giant stack of pastries and pancakes in the middle of the table, like their own private buffet, then leave more than half of it.

Like most things in life. As long as you aren't taking the piss it's fine. We did half board in lanzarote and routinely took a couple of pieces of fruit to supplement our supermarket lunch. Skiing trips we would nab a bread roll and a boiled egg for our pocket lunch.

Tupperware..yeah probably a bit much. If you are taking more then you could physically eat there and then, it's probably too much. At some point it's effecting other people.

Yes and this.

Exactly. That’s a waste of food. Taking food for later isn’t.