Best Breakfast for Your Guesthouse

Best Breakfast for Your Guesthouse Most people like making their own choices from a selection of starters at breakfast-time, so you should aim to provide in your guesthouse plenty of options such as cereals, fruit (fresh or stewed), fruit juices, yoghurt, and muesli (home-made if you can manage it). If your assortment of starters is comprehensive enough you may find that guests often eat less of the main course. Children will usually only opt for cereal and fruit.

Guest House Port Elizabeth - However, from experience most bed and breakfast owners say that their visitors, unless they are on a diet almost invariably do opt for a full English breakfast. A traditional full English breakfast will always comprise of such items as grilled bacon, sausage, and fried or scrambled eggs. If your budget allows you should aim to put on as many additional extras as you can, examples are mushrooms, tomatoes, fried bread, kidneys, black pudding and baked beans. It is worth remembering that if you have visitors staying a longer period of time they may become bored with the breakfast that you have on offer so consider alternatives such as omelets, smoked haddock, kedgeree, kippers, mackerel, porridge and cream, fishcakes and Arboreta Smokiest from Scotland.

These options of course come with an additional cost so use them sparingly. It will be a real treat for visitors to your b&b if you can offer free range eggs, home-baked bread, and your own jams and marmalade or honey. The impression created on visitors by home-made bread and hot breakfast rolls (including good whole meal if you can master how to bake it) are quite out of proportion to the extra work involved. As with any other home produce eggs, milk, cream, and fruit you can afford be generous for the sake of a good impression, as there is a limit to how much anyone can eat of them. If you yourself have no time to make preserves (jam and marmalade) or bread, a local person may be willing (the Women's Institute might be able to put you in touch with someone). Well done if your orange juice is freshly squeezed and if you can offer a choice of teas, (earl grey and Indian are 2 examples) as well as really top-quality coffee, (never instant as it creates a poor impression). Most people prefer hot milk with their coffee so consider putting a jug in the dining room although it will need to be checked periodically to ensure it stays hot. Keeping a coffee maker and toaster in the breakfast room, and encouraging guests to help themselves, will certainly reduce your workload in the kitchen at a busy breakfast time There are arguments for and against the one portion packs of butter or margarine. On the plus side there is less waste and better hygiene, on the minus side there is a higher cost per item, it is fiddly for visitors to open and presents a cafeteria image. It is not difficult to slice a half pound pack of butter in to small pats and put them on iced plates on the breakfast room tables. I can think of nothing in favour of one portion packs of marmalade when compared with a generous part of good quality preserve. Some hosts require all their visitors to take breakfast at a fixed time. Others are more flexible (it is easy to cook each breakfast if visitors do not all come down once), asking guests the previous night when breakfast is wanted (within a fixed time band) and what they want to eat is a good idea as this will cut down on waste and of course reduce costs.

It is a good idea to do some breakfast preparation the night before, particularly if you have to cater for early risers catching planes with business appointments; laying tables, setting out cereals and preserves, and generally preparing the kitchen to be able to make a quick start on breakfast the following morning.