welcome packs

[goosie]

another thread got me thinking about a welcome pack - what is in yours and how much do you spend on it?

At the moment, aside from ecover hand wash and the usual `cleaning` pack of ecover washing up liquid, new j-cloth, new brush, dishwasher and washing machine tablets we only leave out a tray laid with tea cups, teapot, packet of luxury biscuits, organic children's biscuits and fresh milk in the fridge. On special occassions we've left Easter eggs and champagne but not as standard.

What do you leave? And do you tell your guests or leave it as a suprise?

[tree-peony]

2 bottles wine (red and white), bottled water, bread, butter, milk, tea (PG tips and Earl Grey), Coffee (nescafe and lavazza), salt, pepper, olive oil

washing up liquid, dishwasher tablets, washing powder and conditioner

If guests are arriving late, I ask if they want anything else buying. Oh and the supermarket is only a 30 sec walk and open from 7-7

[Mountain Goat]

Same as tree-p, although on late arrivals, who won't catch a shop open, we've started to add super-market-type 'fresh' pasta and a 'fresh' sauce - surprising how many punters go for it the first night. If they don't use it it can be frozen....

Our problem is fresh bread, which lasts about 3 hours before going stale; freezing it is fine but not exactly exciting for the punter.

Our manager always leaves UHT milk, and I've almost given up asking her to stop - ugh.

MG

[Hells Bells]

MG, agree about the bread, and the packaged stuff is awful, although pain cereale seems to last a bit longer.
We leave kitchen cleaning stuff as standard, as well as loo rolls and liquid soap.
Currently we are only leaving a bottle of wine, but am thinking about adding bread, fresh milk, orange juice, and local cheese to that one for the winter.
For late arrivals we can arrange for a ready cooked casserole and vegetables to be left in the fridge.

[Hells Bells]

Ground coffee and English teabags are ther too of course.

[Ju]

Bottle of wine, pack of beer, fresh milk, fresh coffee, tea bags, sugar, bread, jam, butter, cheese, biscuits and a bowl of fruit.

Oh and eggs from the hens.

We make sure as much of this as possible is local produce. I sometimes put in Brioche instead of bread as its a local speciality and does't go stale so quickly.

We sometimes have half a jar of jam left over, and some coffee they are tea drinkers but that is all.

We also do shopping for people if they ask, and they can order a meal. If we know people are arriving late and they have neither shopping nor a meal then I add in some pasta and a sauce. I can't bear to think of people arriving with children and not being able to feed them.

[Eileen2]

We leave all cleaning materials, including soap powder and dishwasher tablets.

Also,
3 bottles of Water
1lt red Wine
1lt Fruit Juice
6 Eggs
Butter
Jam
local honey
Cheese
Teabags(English)
Coffee (nescafe)
Sugar
1lt Milk
1x fresh Bread
ham
Sweet Biscuits
Crackers

Also for return guests we leave 1 large fresh gateaux from our local baker. It comes in a very impressive box decorated with roses!

Eileen.
Holiday Villa Rental in Arillas, Corfu,
Greece

[Chianti]

Ours varies a bit, we always leave tea bags and coffee as norm with other necessities.

Our extras for 2 guests are a bottle of local wine, home made bread, flowers if available from the garden and fresh, seasonal fruit and veg. If available fresh eggs.

Chianti

[vrooje]

Just a bit of forum maintenance here to reference previous posts on this topic:

Four pages on welcome packs from last September
Another from 2007
Mostly about firewood, but a bit about welcome packs (2005)

We've just started with a new property management team who do a local-goods welcome pack with wine, water, bread, cheese, produce, meats, etc. They have two options for it -- the standard or the deluxe (higher quality of everything, e.g., E15 bottle of wine rather than E8 etc.). We go for the standard if the clients are staying for 1 week, deluxe if two or more.

We don't include any toiletries or cleaning stuff in our welcome pack, but that's because we provide essentially unlimited supplies of it at the house already. Same with tea and coffee -- we try to have several varieties available at all times. We also always have ingredients for a simple dinner stocked -- for example, a bundle of dried pasta and jar of marinara. Not gourmet or anything, but people who arrive late at night without having eaten really appreciate it.

We haven't quite worked out yet what to do for our clients who are now returning for their third year. Last year we left champagne as well -- what to do this year? Should we just keep escalating the welcome pack?

[Rocket Rab]

Our manager always leaves UHT milk, and I've almost given up asking her to stop - ugh.
MG

Tell me, is this a Brit fad? Most people drink UHT milk over here (France), and in Switzerland too, I think - we never use anything else, in fact, but I obviously shouldn't be admitting to this...

We leave most of the stuff others have already mentioned..plus yukky UHT milk

[tree-peony]

can't stand the stuff personally. having just returned from 2 and a half weeks in Germany I was really glad to get back to proper milk!! ie pasturised and not homogenised!

[Hells Bells]

Nor can I, and always buy the fresh stuff from the fridge in our French supermarket. I do sometimes leave a carton of UHT in the cupboard though for emergencies and late arrivals. It is OK in a hot chocolate if you add some rum

[la vache!]

I drink UHT skimmed milk RR - and it doesn't taste any different to me to the fresh stuff!
It is easier to buy packs of milk in UHT format, but cheaper still in powder, although I haven't tried that yet. The shelf space in my local SuperU is 4 times as wide for the UHT milk than for the fresh stuff (which smells very strongly of cows urine compared to fresh milk in the UK). I still buy fresh for the kids, but am thinking of changing (I have to recompense that 15% drop in income due to exchange rates somehow )

[Wol]

T-P - you can get milk that isn't homogenised?! Where? What brand?

[Rocket Rab]

I drink UHT skimmed milk RR - and it doesn't taste any different to me to the fresh stuff!
It is easier to buy packs of milk in UHT format, but cheaper still in powder

...have to say, I can't taste any difference - well, it only goes in my tea - but have probably been drinking poisonous UHT stuff for far too long now to know any better. Powdered milk? Hmm, am a rabbit of simple tastes, but even I have to draw the line somewhere...