The Big Game is upon us! Are you preparing you own party trays or buying from your favorite grocer? I think it's fun to be creative and make party trays but sometimes the convenience of buying them wins. The cost now in grocery stores leaves one in a dilemma though especially when you want to prepare your own. Selecting individual munchies has become expensive and more thought goes into what you would like to include. Scaling down the variety is an option or just foregoing the party tray altogether.
I usually do a mix of both so I have more variety and I don't end up working too much or running out of food prematurely. I tend to just make the simpler ones at home or if I feel I can make something significantly cheaper if I opted to do homemade rather than buying one in store. For other items like sushi and maki I definitely would just buy that from a restaurant because I could get more variety that way and I can be assured of the quality and then I could just supplement that with other homemade food so I don't end up spending too much either.
Sometimes I have cheese or cold cuts coupons that make it cheaper to put together my own party tray, like the coupon for $1.50 off salami that I found at Wal-Mart. So I don't really buy premade party trays, since they're more expensive. Plus, cheese that I just sliced is fresher than a cheese tray that has been sitting around.
I find premade party trays are so expensive. I'll take the extra time and make them to save money. I have a bunch of trays that I picked up at the Dollar Store and use them to make cheese trays, deli meat trays, veggies trays and fruit trays. Making your own gives you creativity with what you put out rather than just the standard stuff you get in the premade ones from the supermarket or Costco. I like to use whatever fruit is in season or exotic fruits so I've used kiwi, clementines, mangoes, dragon fruit, lychee, persimmons, grapes, melons, asian pear slices etc. It's fun to mix it up for the guest.
Homemade party trays are definitely the way to go in order to save money on party snacks, rather than purchasing expensive premade party trays at the grocery store. Generally, the more prep work you can do yourself, the more money you will save. For example, buying whole fruits and vegetables and washing and chopping them yourself will save quite a bit of money when compared to purchasing an already prepared fruit or vegetable tray. You could save even more money by using home-grown fruits or vegetables from your garden. This year for the Super Bowl I did not go to the store to buy any snacks. I was determined to use ingredients that I already had. Potatoes are a very inexpensive ingredient that I already had on hand. I made easy baked potato skins, barbecue smoked wienie sausages, and cheesy au gratin potatoes in the slow cooker.
I don't know, the premades are pretty overpriced these days. If you coupon and/or shop sales it can be a lot cheaper (not to mention better, in my opinion) to just make your own. Plus you can have it however you want and it's fresher . I usually end up mixing premade and DIY though for larger events.
I agree sometimes convenience wins out. It depends on how soon I know that it is needed and whether I have the time to make it myself. I think the prepared ones are expensive and making one yourself is more cost effective. You have so many options of the things to put in your homemade one and I think you can get very creative with it. I like making it myself but sometimes there is just not enough time in the day to get everything done.
I always make my own because of allergies, more than anything else. It would be astronomically expensive to try and buy everything for a party tray so that means that making my own is automatically a lot cheaper really regardless of whether I coupon or buy in sales or not. If I do those sorts of things then it's a lot cheaper for me to prepare my own and it makes me able to enjoy the food more knowing that I prepared it myself and know what went into it. So for me, hands down homemade wins.
These are really the ultimate case of convenience versus budget, because they are all things that we can just put together ourselves, but of course if you just spend a couple extra dollars they are already there and packaged and ready to serve and eat and for some people that is what they need. If I have the time I try to just make my own, but I have given in a couple of times and went with the store bought ones.
I prefer to make my own party trays, since I can save a lot of money on them vs. buying them pre-made. Plus, since I am saving so much money making them myself, I can afford to splurge a little on some better and less conventional ingredients on the tray to make it look more unique and different from what you would normally get with pre-made trays. Stores like Gordon Food Service are a great place to get most of the stuff to make a party tray. They even sell the trays and lids dirt cheap. They also have good deals on lunch meats and cheeses bought in bulk - you can get them for nearly half the price of what you would pay per pound at the grocery stores. Veggie trays are also definitely much cheaper when you make them yourself, and they are also a lot fresher too.
@ohiotom76. I have never been to GFS. I see their delivery trucks every now and then and I don't hear many people talk about it but I do hear a lot about Sam's Club. Do you have to have a membership there as well? If you do, then I won't be going there enough to pay for a membership.
For parties in our house, we now avail of the catering service to spare us the labor of cooking food. However, when it comes to appetizers, we prepare it ourselves. In the last party of 2015, we served nachos with 3 kinds of dips for the appetizers while a niece prepared her own Caesar's salad. Maybe next time we will try to potato tray which contains different kinds of potatoes - chips, widgets, fries, baked, etc.
