I don’t leave food but I leave a bottled water, a small chocolate, and a small bowl of instant coffee, sweetners, tea bags and individual creamers.
If you want to provide food for guests as a treat then pick some arrival treats. But what is the issue with the store being 15 min. driving distance? I assume your guests will need a vehicle? Does the store close before most guests arrive? Is there no where for them to pick up any food if they land at the airport and drive to your place?
I guess I like to eat too much. Because I would never arrive somewhere and just start aimlessly driving around wondering where to get my next meal and go hungry. I would have done some type of research beforehand.
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I am thinking about the legal matter here when serving food.
Here in Norway you need a permit to serve food. Hygiene, fridge temperatures and so on.
Maybe I am overreacting. But what if your guests gets sick from the food you have provided?
That refers to prepared food, not unopened items from the supermarket.
With advise from this forum I have now stated “self catering” on my listing. There’s the usual salt, pepper, olive oil, packaged hot chocolate, tea bags.
I do leave some welcome prepackaged snacks and treats. It is up to them to make sure they are fed and watered.
I am with @cabinhost that I have to have some kind of plan of where we will eat and get food.
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Yes, everything we supply is from the supermarket and sealed. Guests can choose to eat it - or not.
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In addition to what others mention, I also do soy sauce, ketchup, mustard, and (egg free) mayo.
When I travel I usually book somewhere for at least a week, and I’m always so appreciative when I rent a place that has these things–at some point I’ll cook a light meal in, so condiments are very convenient.
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Do not waste money on food! Only provide coffee and tea, maybe bottled water, a little yogourt, milk and maybe granola.Nothing more. I used to do fruit but ended up always throwing it out as they rarely ate it.I buy organice quart of milk because it seems to have a longer date than regular milk so if they dont open it I can leave for next guest. Same w yogourt;it has a onth date on it. I have cut my waste dramatically. You should not be filling up cupboards;let them buy their own groceries.Instead just make sure the place is super clean and the place looks nice.
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Yep, coffee, condiments that you can monitor dates on, and prepackaged items that last awhile and you can use as the dates get close. We offer fruit, but that’s because I have 4 kids and there’s usually 1-2 with me as I clean that eat the fruit at the end of its life and we put new out.
(percentages estimated) In the year I’ve been doing this, coffeemaker is used 90% of the time. 75% use the juice and milk. 50% of people use (and often leave extra) condiments. 50-75% eat the fruit. 40% eat the yogurt. 20% use the snack crackers, granola bars, packaged oatmeal, and instant breakfast packets I leave. But almost everyone mentions the food, even if they don’t eat it. But I buy prepackaged when it’s on sale or in bulk so it’s worth it. And I pick up seasonal chocolates on the day after holidays. And everything I buy is what me or my family will eat when near expiration. About 1 in 20 guests has cleared almost everything out (which sucks), but about half the guests touch nothing but the coffee, so it balances out. It averages to about $4-5 in food per stay, and I host groups of 2-4, so about $1.50/person.
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I found a great company called Minimus (dot biz) that sells individually-wrapped condiments and other non-perishable food items. The nice thing is, say a package of mayonnaise is 15 cents (USD). You can order 1 or 200. There is no minimum. They sell all kinds of restaurant style condiments and other food items. That way you can just put out 3 mayo packets, 1 ketchup, 1 soy sauce, 1 peanut butter, and 1 jelly. If someone uses a packet, great. If not, great! It’s better than having a half-used large bottle of mayo or salad dressing in the fridge which can be disgusting and you don’t want to use it because you don’t know if the person ate off the spoon before they stuck it in the jar. It’s really cheap per guest. I also order some non-perishables in bulk from Amazon.
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If my guests are local I leave them fresh milk, bread, butter and sachets of jam/honey/peanut butter and there is flour, sugar, oil, salt/pepper, tea, coffee, longlife milk in the cupboards all the time.
If they are international guests I also give them a little welcome pack of things we call our own in New Zealand to give them a little taste of NZ. I get lovely feedback from them as some of the things they had heard of and were wanting to try.
I do factor in the value of the booking as to how much I leave as 95% of the bookings are one night.
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I do similar to Arlene, plus fresh milk with a a low fat long life milk as an alternate option. As I’ve only been goin g a few weeks I do experiment with different items. I always get a fresh loaf of wholemeal/wholegrain bread on the day of check in. I’ve also started to place white bread in the freezer so people have options. I include orange juice, last few stays I have included some beer. Roasted nuts, chips, fresh fruit. I have a coffee machine which has roasted beans (mainly because I am a coffee addict myself and don’t like pod coffee if I go in to Airbnbs. A range of spices, jam, honey, eggs (from our free range chickens), a range of cereals. (Airbnb does imply bed and breakfast!) And as Arlene does, things like fruit come back to me if uneaten but so far most of the fruit goes quickly. While I don’t consider these when doing my pricing per night, I know the places that have really stood out to me when I have been to Airbnb’s as a guest is where hosts have gone to extra effort to do more for their guests. It’s working so far with great reviews. It’s not a huge expense.
When I’ve stayed the host had a wicker basket with pretzels, pop tarts, almonds and also provided coffee and creamer. I’ve always stayed in “entire house” situations with AirBnB so I realize that there is a vast difference between the price points vs traditional bed and breakfasts that supplied a cooked meal or at least yogurt and fruit.
Honestly I went to a local Target as soon as I got settled in and purchased my own snacks and coffee creamer and didn’t indulge in any of the hosts provided snacks.
I leave the usual condiments, oil, pasta and rice. However, one place we stayed in we arrived around lunchtime the hosts had provided a fresh wholemeal baguette, some butter, a wrapped, locally-sourced brie cheese, a bunch of grapes and a bottle of wine. I thought this was so thoughtful and it was lovely not to have to go shopping immediately. i noticed almost everyon had mentioned this in their (5 star) reviews of the host!
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I leave a loaf of bread and squeeze spreads for the first day’s breakfast. In the fridge, milk, canned coffee, fruit jellies and a couple of beers or a bottle of bubbly if guests are on honeymoon. Nespresso, tea, bottled water is all there and some cup noodles in the cupboard. Condiments and GF soy sauce are in the cupboard. Some Japanese rice cracker snacks in the welcome basket and matcha kit-kat on the pillows. The housekeeper takes whatever is left and I start afresh with each set of guests. Would love to offer some kind of room service menu but I would have to quit my job to do that
Yes, it would be lovely but depending on where you are, you could be attracting trouble with local legislation - and being sued (or at least, feeling terribly guilty!) if anyone got food poisoning. Even if the bad food they had was at a local restaurant, you just know that they’d blame the Airbnb host!
I keep a stash of take-out menus from local restaurants.
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yes, that’s true, I already have food hygiene certification but I don’t have the time
In many areas that’s not enough. You’d need to have a commercial kitchen which would be frequently inspected.
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Thanks Sarah for your insight, I’ve only been hosting a few months and had my first pantry clear out when i went to clean today, I was really shocked, I admit I left a fair bit for them, pasta and sauce, pancake mix, biscuits, cereal, lollipops, condiments, a selection of teas and coffee as well as milk, bread, juice, margarine plus cheese and bikkies on arrival and a bottle of water each etc, I was really shocked to find the pantry bare when I turned up today, usually people only eat the basics and leave the rest. I am now only going to leave the basics as that’s all most people want and its too disheartening to be completely cleaned out (including a knife and fork, spare body wash and shampoo and conditioner that was tucked away in the back of the bathroom cupboard!) Funnily enough I had reservations about the booking from the start as my place is not suitable for babies and they insisted they would be fine (2 couples with a baby each), This gig is tough some days!