What is a B&B?

[cc]

Why call yourself a B&B if you serve evening meals?
We get a mix of mainly Germans, Swiss, Austrians and Brits and only do bed and breakfast. I couldn't imagine doing evening meals as well. Those of you that do, is it compulsory, or do people book them in advance or what? Is it financially viable?

[brenda]

We only offer an Evening Meal as we are a drive away from the nearest restaurants and some guests don't want to drive at night so they can have a drink. Only about 33% of our guests eat here.

We are a typical B+B apart from this - just 2 en suite guest rooms below our villa.

[pete]

I would only describe what we do as b and b to english people, and then only to ensure they understand that we are not a hotel.

In france, chambres d'hotes have always been able to offer meals as well, and as is mentioned, the french often take this offer up,

pete

[Nessie]

The idea of Chambre d hotes in France is a room in a host house, years ago it was set up to supplement the farmers income. Ok its moved on a lot since then . But the farmers also would offer table d hote as well and as I have said on another thread the idea of this is that the guests eat with the family all in one sitting at the same table. No choice of menu would be offered, ok today we don’t offer a choice either but we do ask guests if there is anything that they do not like before preparing the meal. Based on this if you are preparing a meal for your family then to prepare an etc 4 or 5 people does not really increase the cost much.

I enjoy cooking and entertaining so its not a problem , to be honest though we in the peak season really cant face 4 courses every night , not that in practice I have to cook every night as we do encourage our guests to try the local restaurants, but as we are isolated its about a 20 minutes drive o some of them and after a day sightseeing some guests just wish to come back a chill and not have to worry about driving out again to find a place to eat.

If I am only cooking for 2 then I don’t really make any money I just cover my costs, but the I enjoy doing it, its only if you have a larger party then you can make money at it.

Its not compulsory to have to do it and some in our area don’t or maybe only offer it 3 or 4 nights a week.

We also offer guest the free use of the BBQ and supply plates etc so they can prepare their own bbq if they wish, which we find is a great help to families as it cut the cost down of eating out each night. We allow them to prepare a salad etc and ask them to wash up and clean up after them.

It is very hard work and some evening the kitchen has not been cleared away much before 1am, and i also have so say we sometimes just long for a simple bowl of pasta or a bowel of soup as doing a evening meal you do have to try to put on something special

[cc]

I wondered if it was for sort of geogrphical reasons. We are right on the edge of the pueblo so there are 50 restaurants 10 minutes walk away or less and couldn't compete with them even if we wanted to.
We had an elderly couple from the UK stay once who asked what time they had to leave after breakfast and what time they were allowed back in to their room. Real old school B&B stuff.

[The Moles Mother]

Like Nessie, we're in France and do offer evening meals. Our main reason for doing so was that we're vegetarians so decided to specialise in the veggie market.

We also enjoy sharing dinner with our guests. It can be rather a strain during high season but the interesting people we meet makes up for that somewhat.

MM