Really cheap really filling snacks

[Waoop]

If you had to provide snacks in a rented home for 4 days for 30 people and wanted them to be really inexpensive what would you choose?

Context: family rental for 4 days in October the cost covered by the invitees.

We have been allocated snacks for 4 days as our contribution and we are trying to disguise that we have a very very small budget. Financially we are really struggling. The exact brief was a 'snack basket for each room'

There are three main meals a day, but from seeing what people are planning for these some are really light. Yogurt and fruits for breakfast and sandwiches for lunch. We are in charge of the snacks so expect people maybe hungry.

Looking for really cheap and filling snacks. We have more time than money so we can shop from multiple stores.

What sort of budget should we set aside and what would you recommend?

You can never go wrong with Jaffa cakes. McVities are the best but the Asda version isn't bad. Buy a double or triple pack for each room for a couple of quid.

Sharing packs of own brand crisps such as cheese balls for a quid each.

Cereal bars of some kind or those cheap Skinny Whip bars from B&M, Aldi etc for a quid for a box of 5 and are bloody lovely. Lots of different flavours. Toffee, cherry bakewell and the choc orange ones never last

I don't want to look like I am cheaping out. So it's spend as little as possible but giving a decent amount of snacks. I think £100 is probably the max.

Toffee Skinny Whip bars are lovely!

Any chance you could swap with someone else for a different meal? Snacks are expensive, particularly if they’re the pre packaged, and unhealthy kind.

I really wouldn’t faff about trying to spruce things up to look more expensive. That can end up costing more than you think.

Does it have to be baskets? If there’s wriggle room on that, I would suggest doing a few tray bakes, and putting them in biscuit tins/tupperware in the kitchen. A big tub of Rice Krispie buns is an easy chocolate hit.
(If you ask around, you might be able to borrow tins and tubs. Most school mums have a couple for cake sales and PTA demands)

Do you know anyone with a popcorn maker you could borrow? It’s a little novelty to pop it fresh, and kernels are very cheap.

Make a big tray bake of some sort so it's clear you've made some effort, chocolate flapjacks or something like that. One cut into 12 pieces for each room. Then cheap fruit, bananas, apples, satsumas. A big bag of crisps for each basket, maybe 2 bags if it's in budget. Then a pack of biscuits and cakes for each room. Mini rolls, Jaffa cakes, hobnobs, whatever you can get for the best price.

If they are a bit more interested in being healthy, I make big job lots of trail mix type snacks by buying the bags of nuts/fruit and maybe a few chocolate chips and mixing them up. You could do that and pretty them up in some jam jars or something.

Try not to overthink it, if other people are planning to under cater it's not your job as the god of snacks to make up for it!

I think you can do something pretty good for £100. A couple of packets of maryland cookies, a large bag of posh crisps and 8 (1 each per day) bars such as skinny whip, nature valley etc and a couple of apples / satsumas/ bananas should be doable for that. Assume each room is two people.

Sausage rolls
Banana bread
Cheese and ham pinwheels
Block of cheese, crackers,
chopped apples

Might end up as too much of the budget depending on how many rooms there are, but I bought a generous bag of 16 muffins by Bonne Maman in Tesco for £3.35, ambient so their use by date ran for a few months. This was for a camping thing my DC did and they went down very well between 6 of them. If this was a bag for each basket then it should be plenty to last over the days. There may be Tesco equivalents as well.
As personal preference only, I would also really like a trail mix pot done by dividing up larger packs of nibbles, with some of the chocolate cherries (£1.40 in Boots) or just chocolate chips added in.

Good point on having big tins of stuff in the kitchen if you can, there’s some really cheap bakes and refridpgerator cakes you can make in big trays and then slice into squares.

• Flapjacks - oats, marge, golden syrup & Demerara sugar
• rice Crispy squares - own brand rice crispies, marshmallows, marge
• apple streussal tray bake - marge, apples, Demerara & light brown sugar, SR flour
• banan tray bake - bananas, light brown sugar, eggs, SR flour, baking powder

you can make variations on the flapjacks and rice crispy squares like adding a layer of stewed apple between 2 layers of flapjack mix before baking, or adding m&ms into the rice crispies.

Then a big bowl of seasonal cheap fruit that people can help themselves to, stick some in a cupboard so you can ration it over the 4 days.

Costco! They do tons of snacks in bulk boxes

Homemade chocolate chip cookies - I make around 40 per batch - at a guess around £5. Make double batch

A few bags of satsumas. Just decant into a few large fruit bowls in communal areas for people to grab - so anyone who hates fruit doesn’t eat and those that do can eat extra.

Pretzels.

If you can, invest now in these Ikea kilner type glass jars. They are about £2-3 depending on size. But then you can buy big cheaper bags pretzels or similar and decant with nice label on them. And then you can round up the jars after to keep for home storage. I assume if for 40 people and per room basket it’s about 10 rooms worth?

Some multi packs of nice crisps like kettle. Add a couple per room

So how many snack baskets do you need to put together? Will there be children? I would try and break it down so I knew how many family baskets, how many couples etc

Nuts
Apples & satsumas
Popcorn
Plain crisps
Crackers w/ individual wrapped cheese in fridge downstairs

If you go down the popcorn option, this site has lots of ideas to add different flavours and would be much cheaper than buying bags of popcorn.
https://www.liveeatlearn.com/easy-homemade-popcorn-seasoning/

I'd get cellophane cones online and put popcorn, marshmallows, sweets etc in those.

Have a look at snacks.co.uk.
Delivery is free over £25.
Openshaws ploughman lunch snacks are great and you get 12 for £10.99.
It's a bag with a couple of cream crackers, some pickled onions, cheese and a plastic knife. No fridge required.
I put them in guests bedrooms.
Love pub snacks is another company I use.
How many bedrooms are you providing for?
For £100 I think you could do very well.
Multipacks of crisps split up, packets of biscuits, one or two per room, jelly pots and wooden teaspoons (I bought a load of Dole fruit in Jelly for 10p each recently from Morrisons in the clearance section), tray bakes of cakes, breadsticks, jar of pickled onions/gherkins, pretzels, multipack chocolate bars.

Edit: Just checked on love pub snacks and in their clearance they have some good deals like 64 pack box of cadburys and Oreo biscuits for £21 and 12 x 50g peanuts on a card £6.59.

I would also tell the person in breakfast that they need to bring toast, butter jam and marmite for breakfast!

Asda tubs of 16 mini muffins 2 for £4, one tub per room, plus apples and satsumas, nuts and raisins, crisps as pp have said. Aldi do Moser Roth chocolate packs that look like a big bar but are made up of 5 mini bars. Again, a couple in each room. Don't bother making stuff, it won't be worth your while.

Making up snack baskets per room is the issue so I would swerve that if you can. Then you can buy fruit and put in a big bowl, homemade flapjack and perhaps an apple cake or 2. Then big backs of crisps to share. Bags of sweets maybe but not healthy!

Multipacks of pains au chocolate from Aldi or Lidl.

Apples, bananas & satsumas - who cares if most of them eat unhealthily, if they are that hungry they can eat fruit.

Multipack crisps from B&M or similar, likewise chewy bars.

Whatever bags of sweets or boxes of chocolates are cheap - our supermarket sometimes does Terrys chocolate oranges for £1 ask me how I know. 😁

Biscuits.

Costco do massive traybake cakes at a reasonable price

I’d do 2 things-

1. Get some cardboard boxes and cover with pretty wrapping paper. Fill with packets of biscuits, mini bags of Haribo, skinny type whip bars, bags of crisps, pre wrapped pain au choc from Lidls, small chocolate bars etc. These are for the rooms.
2. In the kitchen a big fruit bowl, make some flapjacks and Victoria sponge with just a jam filling. Also every evening make some bowls of popcorn

Also visit farm foods as they have some bargains.

Do you or anyone you know have a Costco card?
I would do
Crisps
Cereal Bars
Mini chocolate bars
Biscuits
Popcorn

Have a B&M trawl and see what they have

I would think that all the unhealthy eaters are going to be disappointed with only yoghurt and fruit for breakfast! To be honest, I'm a fairly healthy eater and that wouldn't be enough for me either. Sandwiches for lunch is fine depending on what kind of bread and fillings, but surely there would need to be other lunch items as well, maybe fruit, salad, crisps. It sounds to me as though everyone else is hugely undercatering, presumably hence the need for so many snacks. Personally I wouldn't be going overboard with this as it certainly doesn't sound as though anyone else is.

Instant noodles. Peanuts in the shells, can get a big bag and divide up. Or regular peanuts, the supermarkets tend to have them in their value ranges. Tortilla chips, again the cheapest ones are often under a pound for a big bag and jarred salsa - check the international aisle as sometimes better cheap options. Plus whatever you find on offer.

good luck

Nothing on my list needs a fridge