Hosting a Progressive Dinner

Having progressive dinners have become a tradition in our neighbourhood. The basic idea is that you move from house to house for various parts of the meal.

This is how we do it.

Find a night that works for everyone’s schedule – this is by far the hardest part!

Once the date is set, we divide up the meal, and assign a different household to each part. Depending on how many houses you have is how many parts of the meal you should assign.

For example, in our neighbourhood, there are three houses that participate; therefore, we have appetizers, main course and dessert. You could always add soup, salad, before or after-dinner drinks, etc.

This time we started at our house for appetizers, and then all walked to the next house for main course and then walked/ran to the final destination for dessert.

The kids love it! They say it’s like having three different play dates! It’s an easy way to enjoy a meal together!

There are other ways to have a progressive dinner, too. If you are not close by, you can drive from location to location, or as we did when I was living in Japan – we all biked! I have also had progressive restaurant nights (a different restaurant for each part of the meal). The possibilities are endless!

Tips:

1. Keep it simple. The kids really just want to play. We vowed next time to just feed them Kraft dinner and hotdogs and have a nice meal for the adults!

2. Keep it moving. Don’t stay long at any one place (especially if kids are involved). The maximum we stayed was 30 – 45 minutes.

3. Mix it around. If you do this more than once, make sure the same family is not always assigned to main course.

4. Invite other families. Besides the families that are hosting, invite other families to participate. Have them contribute to the food at one of the stations.