Hosting Christmas on a Budget: Where the Money Actually Goes

By Jodie Smith, Product & Hamper Manager at The Gourmet Pantry.

Host Christmas on a budget by cutting the accompaniments, not the cheese. The pantry half of a table for eight costs from about $35, $62 or $97 depending on which crackers, nuts and jars you put in the trolley. Same board, same cheese, three very different receipts.

My job is deciding what goes into a box for a fixed amount of money. That is all hamper building is, fifty weeks a year, and the lesson transfers straight to a Christmas table: the thing people cut first is almost never the thing costing them the money.

The four places Christmas money goes

Split the shop into four and the picture gets clear quickly.

The centrepiece. Ham, turkey, prawns, whatever the day is built around. Biggest single number, least negotiable, and the reason people turned up. We do not sell it, so I have no reason to talk you out of it.

Fresh support. Cheese, salad ingredients, bread, cherries. Priced by weight, bought in the last three days, and the part that goes in the bin when you overbuy.

The pantry half. Crackers, nuts, olives, popcorn, one jar to spread and something sweet at the end. Shelf stable, buyable in October, and the only part of the list where the same job can cost you three dollars or seven.

The non food. Bon bons, napkins, serving boards, ice, then more ice.

Most budget advice goes after the first two. Buy a smaller ham, buy a plainer cheese, serve one salad instead of three. That makes the meal worse for a saving everybody can taste. The pantry half works the other way round: the spread of prices inside it is enormous, and nobody at the table can tell you what a cracker cost. Most of it sits on one shelf, our festive entertaining essentials.

That is not a trick, it is simply where the range sits. When a hamper has to hit a price and still look full the moment the lid comes off, the crackers, the popcorn and the sweet tin are the lines we choose most carefully, because they carry the volume. Nobody has ever opened a box and thought about the price of the wafer under the cheese.

The cracker shelf is the lever nobody pulls

The clearest example in our own range sits side by side on the same shelf. A 100 g packet of parmesan Crackerthins is from $2.95. A 150 g box of fig and olive seed crisps is from $6.95. Both hold cheese. Both look right on a board. One is a brittle wafer that disappears under a piece of brie, the other is a dense fruited slice people eat happily on its own.

A table of eight wants three packets of crackers, working from the five a head figure in our guide to how much food per person. Three packets of Crackerthins comes to $8.85. Three boxes of seed crisps comes to $20.85. That is a twelve dollar swing decided in about ten seconds, and the same decision repeats on the nuts, the olives and the sweet thing at the end. Make it five times and you have found the price of the ham.

None of which is an argument for buying the plain one every time. Seed crisps are what guests pick up and ask about, and a board of nothing but wafers reads as thin. The rule that survives contact with a real table is one interesting cracker to three plain ones: the good box at the front where people reach first, the wafers carrying the volume. Mini artisan crackers at from $4.95 sit between the two, and a 110 g box of small rounds lasts longer than it looks because people take one at a time.

One more thing the shelf makes easy. The gluten free Crackerthins are priced inside the same band as the rest of the range rather than above it, so covering a coeliac guest costs about what covering anyone else costs. Buy that packet separately, open it first, and put a clean knife beside it.

Where to spend and where to save

Save on the things that go underneath. Wafer crackers, plain flatbread and the second bowl of nuts are structure, not flavour. Nobody remembers them and nobody photographs them. This is the only saving on the whole list that costs you nothing.

Spend on the jar. One good relish or pesto is the thing people ask about, and it does more per dollar than anything else on the board. A 110 g jar goes around eight people twice with some left for Boxing Day, and it is the one item that keeps in the cupboard if the day goes differently.

Buy one nut, not three. Three small bags of different nuts cost more than one larger bag and get eaten less, because people pick their favourite and leave the rest. One nut, one bowl, refilled.

Spend on the last thing they taste. Dessert is usually somebody else's job, so the sweet finish beside the coffee is yours. Good shortbread or a box of truffles is the cheapest way to end well, and both keep, so an unopened box becomes next year's problem rather than this week's waste.

Save on the drinks table, not the food. One white, one red, and a jug of sparkling water with mint and lemon in it. Adults only, and enjoy responsibly.

A table for eight, costed three ways

Below is the pantry half only, priced from our own range on the day of writing. The centrepiece and the cheese are deliberately left out, because they are the same number in all three columns. That is the whole argument. The variation lives in the part nobody budgets for.

Per head that is roughly $4.33, $7.81 and $12.13. The lean column is not a sad board. It is three packets of crackers, a bowl of nuts, a bowl of popcorn, a jar and a tin of shortbread sitting beside the cheese and ham you were buying anyway, and most guests could not tell you which column they had been eating from.

One piece of arithmetic worth having in front of you: the generous column lands at $97.00, three dollars short of the $100 mark where shipping goes free Australia-wide. Within a few dollars of that line, one more jar costs less than the postage would.

Buying beats making more often than people admit

The other lever is your own Christmas Eve. Home made is only cheaper when your time is free, and on 24 December it is not. A box of twelve savoury pastry cases from $9.95 is a tray of canapes with no pastry, no rolling and no oven on in a heatwave, filled with whatever the fridge holds: relish and a shaving of cheddar, a prawn and a squeeze of lemon, tinned tuna with capers.

The test is whether making it saves more than it costs you in the hour before guests arrive. Baking your own shortbread rarely passes. A salad dressing almost always does. We worked out where that line falls in snacks worth buying instead of making, and the ready to go end of the range sits in the snacking range.

The order to buy it in

Timing is the last lever, and it costs nothing. Buying the shelf stable half early spreads the cost across two pay cycles and takes the panic premium out of the last week.

1. October and November. The whole pantry half: crackers, nuts, olives, popcorn, jars, fruit paste, sweets. All of it keeps, and the range is still complete, so you choose rather than take what is left.
2. Late November. Bon bons, serving boards, anything posted interstate, and any hamper going to another house.
3. The week before. Cheese, cured meat and the ham. Cheese wants a few days out of the cold anyway.
4. Christmas Eve. Prawns, bread, salad leaves, cherries, ice. Buy these tight, because this is the group you throw away.

Shipping is free Australia-wide on orders over $100, and orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched the same day from our Corio, VIC warehouse, tracked with Australia Post. Give the pantry order a fortnight and then stop thinking about it.

When a hamper is the cheaper answer

If you are the guest rather than the host, the question inverts. A box you assemble yourself takes a trip, a wrap and a card, and usually costs more than the packed version once you have bought five items to fill it out. The least expensive hampers we pack start from $59.95, and the value range hampers are grouped for exactly this decision. Our Christmas hampers arrive with the choosing done.

Questions about Christmas on a budget

How do I host Christmas lunch on a budget in Australia?

Keep the centrepiece and cut around it. Buy one ham or one tray of prawns rather than both, hold the cheese at three pieces, and take the saving out of the accompaniments: plain crackers for volume, one type of nut, one jar rather than four. Buy that pantry half in October while nothing is urgent, and serve the meal cold so the oven stays off. Then ask two guests to bring a salad and one to bring dessert, which is the oldest budget trick in the country and still the best one.

How much does it cost to feed eight people at Christmas?

The half you control comes to about $35, $62 or $97 depending on how you buy it, which is roughly $4.33 to $12.13 a head. On top of that sits the centrepiece and the cheese, which cost whatever your butcher and grocer charge and are the same number in all three columns. That is why the accompaniments deserve the attention: they are the only part of the bill you set.

What is the cheapest way to feed a crowd at Christmas?

A cold spread with one hot element. Buy a large ham and let it do three jobs across two days, build a board around it with wafer crackers, one bowl of nuts and a jar to spread, then add bread and two salads. Serve it at room temperature so nothing needs an oven or a second fridge.

Where should I spend and where should I save at Christmas?

Spend on the centrepiece, the jar and the last sweet thing of the day. Save on crackers that go under cheese, on nut variety, on a fourth salad, and on anything you planned to make at 9pm on Christmas Eve. The rule underneath: spend where people look and taste directly, save where the item is a vehicle for something else.

Work out your three columns, then buy the pantry half early. Crackers, nuts, jars and sweets are all in festive entertaining essentials, and the rest of the cluster starts from our guide to Christmas food in Australia.