Bday parties where no "food" is served

[Anonymous]

I dread when my 4 yr old is invited to party at meal time. The food offering is usually gross creep pizza.

[Anonymous]

I'm doing a birthday party for my son. Kids and parents are invited.

Pizza, salad, cake, fruits, water and juice for the kids

For adults - we carter foods from Del Taco and many more foods.

I don't mind providing foods for everyone because this is like a little gathering for us and I have budget for it.

Don't be stingy with foods

[Anonymous]

In my family, a party isn't a party without food.

That said, I would prefer that my small children attend a party where only cake is served vs one where cake + gross cheap food (like pizza) are served.

[Anonymous]

I agree. Don't have a party at meal time if you aren't prepared to feed the kids. Pick another time. If the party is 2-4 I am not expect more than cake. But if the party is between 11 and 2 or 4-8 I wold expect there to be food.

Honestly it is just common sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
How is 430-630 not mealtime?

If you eat dinner at 6:30 or later!

Weird, that would be a late dinner for us.
If the party ends at 630, most kids would be starving when they get home.

Yes and my child goes to be at 7:30 so there would barely be time to eat once we got home.
Younger kids go to bed early so I would say 5-6:30 is prime dinner time for the under 10 crowd.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In my family, a party isn't a party without food.

That said, I would prefer that my small children attend a party where only cake is served vs one where cake + gross cheap food (like pizza) are served.

Gross cheap food?

What if it's from a high end Italian restaurant? Pizza is awesome.

What of the cake is from Giant and has red icing?

[Anonymous]

Food is one reason that I am no longer hosting birthday parties for DC. 1) Food was usually 50% of the cost of an afternoon that also included a structured activity such as skating or a bounce place. Sometimes it was more than 50% of the cost because DC's private school says if one kid in class is given an invite, all must be. 2) DC has food allergies. I was driving myself batty looking for food DC could eat that no other guests were allergic to. Few people ever reciprocated this consideration and I always have to bring a backup snack to the parties DC attends though many allergic guests showed up at our parties with no backup.
Now, we send allergen-free cupcakes to school and then do either an outing with 1-2 close friends or a family trip. DC does not miss the parties.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In my family, a party isn't a party without food.

That said, I would prefer that my small children attend a party where only cake is served vs one where cake + gross cheap food (like pizza) are served.

Gross cheap food?

What if it's from a high end Italian restaurant? Pizza is awesome.

What of the cake is from Giant and has red icing?

Cold pizza that has been sitting around for an hour is gross. A fresh pizza with homemade sauce and fresh mozzarella right out of the oven, is great.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Food is one reason that I am no longer hosting birthday parties for DC. 1) Food was usually 50% of the cost of an afternoon that also included a structured activity such as skating or a bounce place. Sometimes it was more than 50% of the cost because DC's private school says if one kid in class is given an invite, all must be. 2) DC has food allergies. I was driving myself batty looking for food DC could eat that no other guests were allergic to. Few people ever reciprocated this consideration and I always have to bring a backup snack to the parties DC attends though many allergic guests showed up at our parties with no backup.
Now, we send allergen-free cupcakes to school and then do either an outing with 1-2 close friends or a family trip. DC does not miss the parties.

It depends on the family. I emailed every RSVP to find out about food allergies and kids who had dietary needs not related to allergies and accommodated all of them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree. Don't have a party at meal time if you aren't prepared to feed the kids. Pick another time. If the party is 2-4 I am not expect more than cake. But if the party is between 11 and 2 or 4-8 I wold expect there to be food.

Honestly it is just common sense.

Reasonable is some crackers, fresh fruit, veggies and and other snack items.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am amazed how many times my child gets invited to a bday party at a mealtime (10:30 to 12:30) or (4:30 to 6:30) but no real food is served. Only cake, fruit and in one particularly egregious case, candy. At one birthday party, there was just one cheese pizza for about 10 kids who has been in a bounce house for about an hour. Nothing for the parents (it was not a drop off party).

I don't live around people who can't afford to do more, they choose not to, or maybe food is just not their priority. But to me having guests leave a party hungry is just odd.

I think your reaction is odd.

Feed your kid before the party, or wait until afterwards.

Our family's dinner time is around 7:00 most days so I would consider that time frame perfect for a light snack or cake and ice cream.

Not everyone eats at 7. My kid eats between 4-6 depending on activities as he's starving after school. I'd be annoyed at 4 PM if there was only cake and ice cream.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is this a new thing where it's expected to provide a meal for the guests, the siblings, and the parents? I recall most parties I attended as a kid having cake and snacks. Now if I were to do that is have to specify in the invitation?! Do I need to list what ingredients will be in what I'm serving as well do to allergy concerns?

I guess it depends...I am 37 and do not recall attending a party or having a party where there was just cake and punch. Yes, they were all home parties - but guests were always served food. Granted it was hotdogs, burgers and chips, but you provided a meal.

You wouldn't have any other party anywhere for any other age group and not serve food at a meal time (I personally think food includes snacks, heavy apps, etc) - why do this at a kid's party?

And yes, if you had a party from 11-1 or 4-6 and had no intent of serving anything other than cake and juice/water, you should specify that.

I am 44 and until middle school, very few parties really had a meal, just cake and punch usually. If parents splurged, they got ice cream. Nothing was expensive. Cakes were almost always homemade, the punch from either a powdered mix or (and this was FANCY) a tub of frozen punch concentrate or sherbet that had ginger ale poured over it. The exception was sleepovers. And for those, parents did not serve two meals. You came after dinner in your pjs. There were simple snacks like a bowl of popcorn, chips, or pretzels and a single flavor of soda. Between 10:30 and midnight, the mom would breeze in with a small tray of some cheap, hot snack like pizza rolls or pigs in a blanket. The next morning, the mom served breakfast and it was acceptable for this to be cold sugar sweetened cereal, especially if it was Sunday and families were rushing to go home to shower, change, and make it to Mass. If it was Saturday and the mom liked cooking, she might make pancakes OR eggs, bacon, and toast.

Here is what sticks out in my mind because it was so novel:
--one girl had a real pizza. It was brought home by her dad from a pizzeria and had been "party cut" (sliced into many squares instead of 8-10 triangles). I didn't like crust as a child and was excited to have a center piece.
--a mother served us broiled grapefruit for breakfast. The whole family was on a diet. We each got a half a grapefruit and a pink packet of sweetener to sprinkle on top. I told her I was not allowed to have that sweetener. She said that I could not have anything else. Later, she relented and gave me a cup of BLACK coffee with a single sugar cube.

In middle school and high school, parties started when the sun went down and ended around 11. There was usually a buffet table and it did not have a huge variety of foods. Both homemade and carryout foods were acceptable. Even at my wealthy prep school, no one had a catered party unless it was a formal Sweet 16 at a banquet hall. Pizza and Kentucky Fried Chicken were popular. One boy had a six foot Italian sub and we were all impressed. Various types of chips and sodas completed the "meal". I remember that one party had either coleslaw or potato salad, both which I hated and none of the girls ate because we thought mayo would make us bloat and get pimples. Before the party ended, cake and punch made an appearance. Homemade cakes were less common then, but mainly because more guests were in attendance. Cakes tended to be simply decorated sheet cakes. If you were close with the birthday child, you got a piece with a rose. The name was never served, oddly. Sometimes, a parent would splurge for the cake that was half vanilla batter and half chocolate. Ice cream cakes from Baskin Robbins were acceptable, but little cups of ice cream or ice cream scooped from a tub were seen as childish. A few girls had cookie "cakes" made by a company at the mall and it was considered pretty sophisticated though the cookie was usually pretty bad and there was no neat way to slice it. If a girl had a sleepover, you didn't have any substantial food that night, just popcorn, chips, etc during the inevitable horror movie on VHS. Then, we went to McDonald's for breakfast the next day. A very cool mom would let you make cookies around midnight and we would eat the dough and get stomachaches. The coolest mom of all would save fortune cookies from her family's outings to Chinese restaurants and give us those. Most were terribly stale, but we loved them. Besides, we deeply believed that your fortune only came true if you ate your cookie before reading the slip of paper.

In short, no goodie bags of candy or custom decorated cookies at the end. No food for parents or siblings. No personalized plates if you were a picky eater or allergic. As it turns out, I was the only kid I knew with food allergies and no one (including me or my parents) provided an alternative or took any precautions to label allergens or avoid cross contamination. I find that pretty scary actually, but it was the norm for the times. Except for the broiled grapefruit incident, I never felt deprived by these meager offerings. We did not expect more. My parents never asked me after the party what was served or if I was still hungry. There was no shame for hosts in offering only cake and punch. We kids were all grateful for both as dessert and snacks in my community were less common back then than now.

Aside from avoiding allergens, I wish we would return to these simpler parties. Many families can not afford to feed even Subway to 30 kindergardeners, their parents, nannies, and assorted uninvited siblings.

[Anonymous]

What I don't understand is why they never feed the parents. If it's not a drop-off party (in our cases, it's not because the kids are 3-4 years old), then the parents have to be there. Don't people realize that adults get hungry, too? It's ridiculous to serve kids pizza and adults nothing and then expect everyone to go home and be happy. Then my kid is full, but we're still hungry when we get home and have to figure out dinner for some but not all of us. It's weird.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
1. Etiquette says you should not expect free food, except the tradition of cake (and candles and Happy Birthday song) at birthday parties.

2. At children's parties, parents should not expect food for themselves.

3. If the birthday party spans lunch or dinner, the host or hostess should provide something more substantial than cake, but again, you cannot expect it.

4. Be aware that some cultures have meals at completely different times. For example, in our country, lunch starts at 1pm and dinner at 7 or 8 pm. In Spain, it's even later. Since I've been here awhile, I know American children have lunch around noon and dinner perhaps around 6. But others may not know this.

I am a stickler for etiquette too. However in this case you are wrong. Etiquette dictates that if you are the host, whether at your home or another venue, you are responsible of the comfort and well being of your guests. that includes food. If parents are staying, something they will eat too. Maybe is just extra pizza. 10:30am is not really a meal time to me but if a bunch of parents were staying I would probably make it a brunch with bagels. Maybe attendees shouldn't expect it but a host should never hold a party if she cannot properly accommodate the guests. and that includes food. If thats too expensive, cut your guest list way down. this is up there with people who have weddings and then have a cash bar. If you can't afford it, don't invite so many people.

[Anonymous]

We have never been to a party during lunch/dinner hours where food and drink has not been served.

We also provide adult beverages when we hosted parties in our home.

And unlike the the rude poster above we are not all roly-poly.