Best Tips & Ideas for Easy Family Vacation Meal Planning

One of the most frequently asked questions about meal planning in the summertime is, “How do you meal plan for a large family vacation?” It’s crazy, you take your family on vacation, and they still want to eat. Plus, now you have many extra people to plan for and around. So, let’s talk about the best tips for planning easy vacation meals for the whole family.

Who’s In Charge?

First things first, who’s in charge? Someone needs to steer the meal planning ship, and it should be someone who’s part of planning the other parts of the trip since you’ll want to tailor your meals around what you have planned. This person will be in charge of communication, not necessarily all the cooking or prepping meals though. So, who’s in charge?

Decide How to Plan For Easy Meals

Before you gather meal ideas, it’s important to know the number of people you are planning for and your schedule. A pro tip: planning your meals according to your schedule is a good idea. It’s a lot of work to cook, and you don’t want to waste a ton of money by buying food you won’t eat and will go to waste, so look at your travel plans first and plan easy meals accordingly.

Plus, you are on vacation, so I don’t know about you, but I want to relax, so keeping meals simple is a goal, too!

Don’t forget to consider what your beach house or rental home has for amenities. Does it have things like a slow cooker, instant pot, stove top, or full kitchen?

Be sure to chat about breakfast and lunch as well. Even if it’s as simple as everyone bringing their own things for those meals, it’s good to communicate that up front so you are all on the same page.

Divide & Conquer When It Comes to Vacation Meal Planning

Once you have decided who you are cooking for and how many meals you must make, most families create a master list of easy dinner ideas.

My mom starts creating a simple vacation meal plan for my family and then sends us a group text. My sister, cousins, and I each add a meal idea to the list and take turns making a meal. I usually like to make one of my family’s favorite meals because if my family loves it, chances are other people will, too.

For my husband’s family, we share meal planning equally. On our upcoming week-long vacation, we are planning for four nights so his parents are taking a night, each of his sibling’s families is taking a night, and then we are taking a night.

You can either have someone in charge send a group email or group text detailing the nights available and have everyone reply to sign up with a night and what they are making. It’s essential to send it to everyone who’s coming so everyone’s on the same page. A communication breakdown is usually the culprit of frustration, just an FYI.

If you have a really large group, a site like Sign-up Genius works great, too. People can sign up, and everyone can see what they are bringing.

You can even have people sign up for breakfast & lunch items and other supplies like paper plates, napkins, and drinks.

Just remember, when you are planning your vacation rental, the rental kitchen will most likely not have an extensive supply of spices or olive oil, so you’ll need to bring those things along or add them to your shopping list.

Gathering the Supplies

Depending on how you will get to your destination, you have several options for prepping supplies. For road trips like going to my family’s lake house for the 4th of July, I prepare all the desserts (these magic bars made the list) and some snacks like this gump recipe ahead and bring them along.

When we go on our beach vacation, I will make my grocery list based on the easy recipes I am making. Since going grocery shopping in a new store can be overwhelming, I either place an Instacart order to be delivered to our beach rental house or a Walmart pickup order to grab on the way.

Get Your Meal Planning Notebook on Amazon Here

What Can You Make Ahead?

Meats work great to make ahead and take with you. For BBQ chicken sandwiches, use ground beef, taco meat, or shredded chicken. Place the freezer meal in the cooler, and it will thaw on the way.

Desserts and snacks are also great to make ahead and bring along so you aren’t stuck in the kitchen while on vacation, but you can still enjoy the family favorites!

What Can You Buy Pre-Made?

Don’t forget about buying pre-made options while on vacation, too; while there is an extra cost, you are on vacation so rarely, consider the expense worth it. Things like dips, pre-made hard-boiled eggs, frozen quiches, frozen monkey bread, frozen lasagna, pre-cut vegetable trays, and fresh fruit trays are good options that give you some time back on vacation.

Great Options for Simple Meals on Vacation

Grilled Chicken Breast
Lunch meat or peanut butter sandwiches
Cheeseburgers & hot dogs with french fries
crock pot pulled meat sandwiches
Walking Taco bar
BLT Bar (check out the BLT wraps)
Frozen lasagna, frozen garlic bread & bagged salad kit

A few Important Things When It Comes to your summer vacation meal plan…

It’s okay to eat things more than once.

While at the lake, we rotate eating leftovers, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, and brats for lunch. Easy food doesn’t mean it’s not delicious. The same goes for breakfast. Having sandwiches every day or cereal every morning works great and keeps things simple and manageable.

Bar-style meals work great for crowds.

Set up a taco bar, salad bar, or sandwich bar. Not only will it save on prep, but everyone will be able to make it how they like it.

Don’t forget to plan for drinks, snacks, and tableware.

While I don’t mind doing the dishes regularly, I always buy paper plates and paper towels while away. It cuts down on the work so I can enjoy more time with my family and less time in the kitchen, and the total cost is nominal when you consider all the extra time you will have to enjoy the vacation.

I also love to grab individual snack bags so I can toss them into my beach bag, and they don’t get stale, wet, or full of sand from tiny hands (you know what I mean).

Write your vacation meal plan down.

It’s important everyone is on the same page. Record it in your meal planner and set it out on the counter, just like you do at home. People still ask, “What’s for dinner?” on vacation!

Keep it simple.

It doesn’t have to be fancy to feed your family. The best thing about quick meals and simple recipes is that they take little time away from your vacation, so you have plenty of time to make memories with your family. Young children grow up fast, as we all know. I love to squeeze every moment out of vacation.

Explore local restaurants.

I plan on eating out a few times. It’s a great way to kick off vacation on the first night or a great way to end the vacation on the last day (unless you want to use up all those leftovers). There are even some great fast food options (think food trucks, a beach bar, or a pizza place) if you don’t want to take a large group to a restaurant.

Just Remember…

When it comes to your beach vacation meal plan or planning for a group, keep it simple and communicate, communicate, communicate. I hope your next trip is so much fun and full of incredible memories.

We’ll spend lots of time together since you have your meal plans taken care of. The last thing I want to do during that precious vacation time is stress about what’s for dinner, so with a little preparation up front, you’ll have the meals covered.

What are your favorite tips when it comes to vacation meal planning? Please share them in the comments.