My Boy Scout patrols budget $13 per person, per weekend. This includes 2 breakfasts, 1 lunch and 1 dinner. They never seem to have a problem meeting the budget.

I used to budget $5 per person per night for cub campouts. However, I'd up it to $7 per person per night now.

We use $3 per person per meal. This leaves them with extra food to go back in the patrol box, as well.

When I cook for church youth, it's more like $3 breakfast, $4 lunch $5 dinner, and they eat well.
That's for 100 plus kids.

What you will find is breakfast is usually the cheapest meal, if you forgo a lot of bacon, and spend the extra on supper.

We don't do much with cabins, but when we do, we add it to the individual cost.

Now, if this weekend was something that you all said that your fundraisers were for, you may want to underwrite some of the cost. But your committee needs to look at your budget for the rest of the year to see how much you can afford to put to this weekend. Most packs make a big production of pinewood derbies and Blue & Gold banquets, you want to make sure everybody agrees on what they'll spend towards those big ticket items so you'll have an idea of what's left for these activities.

We were blessed with a great popcorn season, so we have more wiggle room with our budget this year. Therefore, the Pack (scout dues) now picks up the cost for scout camping. In the past, the Pack purchased the meat, disposables and site fees. Families signed up to bring side dishes, fruit snacks, desserts and firewood.

We now reserve the cabins, lodge or tent sites 4-5 months in advance. If we don't, they are booked and then we are rushing to find a different location or worse, a different weekend. We have found families like the yearly calendar in advance and if we change it, numbers go down. The Pack normally picks up the cost for the site, however our bunk bed lodge/gym camp-in January is $18.50 per person. Scout dues cover the scout, but we are charging parents $10.00. I am asking folks to sign up and pay at the December Pack meeting or make arrangements to register by Jan 11.

Due to space limitations, we allow one parent per scout and no siblings for our winter lodge events. We haven't had issues in the past with limited space and sign-ups because we don't have a lot of families that "camp." (This is another issue we are trying to address. This site is less than 5 minutes away and doesn't require an equipment investment except for industrial strength ear plugs! Hopefully, we will get a good turnout.)

My son's Troop allows $3 per person/meal.

Troop allows $4 per person per meal for boy scouts cooking as a patrol.

As already mentioned, Breakfast is the cheapest so you borrow money from the breakfast budget and apply to other meals. Group cooking is cheaper than individual cooking due to economics of scale.

You can offer grits and oatmeal, breakfast bars, fruit, scrambled eggs for breakfast. One person can cook a dozen eggs at one time in a fry pan. Feeds 5-6 people at once. You might be a $1 per person for above menu.

Lunch of bulk packs of sliced sandwich meat, bulk pack of sliced cheese, loafs of bread, large squeeze bottles of mayo & mustard, couple heads of lettuce, couple maters sliced, a few bags of chips. Lay it out on a table and state everyone gets 3 slices of meat, 1 slice of cheese and 2 slices of bread on first pass thru line. After everyone has been thru the line once, let them eat for a while. After 10 minutes then you allow anyone to pass thru line a second time with same limits. If anything left over, open the line to unlimited consumption. 5 gallon cooler of bug juice. Sometimes you can buy bulk packages of cookies. Everyone gets 2 or 3 whatever magic number the math works out. BUT ONLY after all the sandwhiches have been eaten. Make it a seperate trip to the buffet line to get desserts.

The simple first: Place are reserved ahead of time so you get the place and date. Most the cost is split by the attendees although in some larger packs where money is not an issue the pack pays the reservation fee completely which can be from $25 to $200 depending on the place you go to. (State Parks are cheapest) Some places already have a standard charge per person like a zoo campout.

For food, we average $10 to $20 in Troops based on how many meals and what kind of meals. My suggestions since it a first time for you is to decide your menu then look at prices of the stuff you need to buy. How much to buy is where the side label will help you. figure 1.5 serving for all and it'll give ya the best 'average' with a bit extra. Another thing is you can always charge the $20 and then reimburse people back via Scout accounts so their money can be used for the next activity while making it easier to learn for yourself as a first timer.