How much would you spend in order to provide light breakfast and snacks for 4 people?
I provide fruits, juice, soda, chips, oatmeal, instant coffee, eggs. I tried not to go over $10 since I charge cleaning fee only $20 ( I thought $10 for cleaning purposes etc, and $10 for food / day)
@Ana2 unless you live in the middle of nowhere you don’t need to provide breakfast at all.
If you do you should cost it into your daily rate. Not your cleaning fee which is a one off cost.
People eat breakfast every day so should be charged for it every day.
You could just charge for/do a continental breakfast which would be much cheaper say croissant and jam or a pastry with coffee or tea.
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i agree with @Helsi. There’s no point in providing breakfast unless you are charging for it properly within your nightly fee - not ‘how much would you spend’.
There are so many variables here.
$10 seems too low for 4 people. I would say a ballpark figure is $5 a person or $20 for 4 people per day. You really need to price it out yourself. What does everything you serve cost you per person? Calculate it out.
Also, it’s going to vary depending on where you are. Food in some areas of the USA (and in other countries) can be a lot more/less expensive.
Hi Helsi,
I thought about croissants and jam. But in my mind, people would not touch an open item. Especially food.
My rate is quite low since we have tons of competitors around tourist area, niagara falls.
Are you preparing the breakfast or do the guests do it themselves?
Just preparing, they live below us with everything seperate
Croissant and an individual jam costs me $1.00. I know my costs for every single breakfast item.
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Tons of tourists, too!
i buy large amounts of continental breakfast bread items on sale, freeze and then repackage in plastic bread bags (which I also bought in bulk) in appropriate number for guests based on length of stay. People seem to be comforted by the repackaging, whereas they might hesitate to take from a large open package of, say, English muffins. Which is psychologically kind of funny cuz I’m the one taking them out of the large packages!
I got a bulk deal on those cute individual jam jars. (Just like at the Ritz haha). I buy up the half-sticks of butter when on sale and freeze those also. No cream cheese as individual packets are cost prohibitive and probably wouldn’t freeze well anyway. And I provide dry cereal, shelf-stable milk and almond milk individual servings, some oatmeal packets, individual juice boxes or bottles. And a few snack items for late night noshing if flights get in late. Guests never eat it all so unused items can be recycled to the next guest. The stale pastry/bread items and opened butter go into bread puddings for me. My rule of thumb is to only buy items that are less than 50 cents per serving.
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Coffee only at my places.
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Gosh there are so many threads about breakfast here on the forum and the spectrum of opinions. In a completely separate place I wouldn’t provide it at all. You probably can provide a small continental breakfast in most of the continental US for 2.50 a person but it’s more trouble than it’s worth.
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Everytime I think of providing food for guests - even something very simple - it just adds levels and levels of complications to everything.
One time I tried putting snacks in their rooms - for a couple of weeks. Most people didn’t touch any of it. I put chocolate bars, crackers, chips, a variety of things - I thought for every taste. But I would say 90% of it went untouched.
Even providing water adds a level of complication. After much experimentation with purchasting bottled water and deciding that was too much effort (constantly going to the store and lugging those heavy packages up the stairs), we opted for a water filter and glass bottles.
The first filter we used was terrible. It took FOREVER to fill a 20 oz bottle and it made so much noise. After that experiment failed we went for an under-the-counter filter which meant drilling a hole through our granite counter top. That works really well. But it’s still a complicaton.
But even this simplified version can be a lot of work. Just making sure there are always clean bottles on hand is a lot of work. Plus, we have a strict cleaning routine. Bottles must be washed in the dishwasher. We can never touch the mouth of the bottle with our hands - if we do, we’ll wash it again before giving it to a guest. Then the tops… the tops have to be washed by hand because they’ll be ruined in the dishwasher. So those all have to be washed by hand in super hot water with soap - to kill any germs. Then they must be placed on the bottles with gloves - so our hands never touch those either. We take a lot of care to make sure these will be completely germ free for the guests. It’s a lot of extra work.
Sometimes we have 6 guests staying at the same time. It’s a constant washing and refilling of bottles. We let them refill after they’re here - but we also offer them clean bottles every day. A lot of them want a new bottle every day - which is fine - but it adds consierably to the workload.
We’ve gotten used to doing it and it’s just part of our routine now - so no real problem.
But food just seems like a huge jump in making things way more complicated. And it would be a pretty big daily expense too.
I’d love to be able to offer something simple, like dry cereal that we could just leave out in the kitchen for them. But what kind of cereal? Obviously we’d have to have several kinds. Then, what are they going to eat it with - surely not dry. So we’d have to provide some kind of milk.
Milk and cereal here are both pretty expensive. Not to mention the constant trips to the store to restock everything all the time.
Sanitize the caps with a diluted bleach solution.
Hmm… good idea. I might worry though if we didn’t get 100% of the bleach out.
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Our whole house listing I put in coffee, tea, a few spices, condiments, and box of pancake mix and a bottle of syrup. So far no one has touched anything expect the ketchup.
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Good thing, pancakes and syrup could be a sticky mess.
Can’t you drink tap water where you have your listing?
Then you certainly don’t need to provide a daily breakfast,
Just keep some basics in there such as tea, coffee, sugar, oil, salt and pepper.
Then if you like add some fresh milk and some pain au chocolat or similar to start them off.
Leave instructions regarding nearest shops for food, cafes and restaurants.