With the vaccination of children, the return of face-to-face events and the end of the pandemic isolation restrictions, children’s birthday parties are celebrated again.
However, the high cost of buffets gave rise to a trend: shared parties. To save money, parents and guardians join children with nearby birthdays and share costs so that the date does not go unnoticed. It is an exercise for the child to learn to negotiate the items and themes of the party.
Long before this trend emerged, three mothers told the report of Brazil Agency who had already organized the party shared with other parents. It is an option to save money and time, according to federal public servant Giovana Tiziani. “I’m super in favor, because every weekend there was a little party or a weekend with two little parties. It was very tiring, I think joining makes everyone’s life easier. Not only for the economy, but to concentrate the parties and occupy less people’s agenda”, defends the mother of Inácio, 9 years old, and Joaquim, 11 years old.
The servant had two shared parties for her youngest son. One of them was made at a buffet, with a friend of the child. “It was worth it, because we were able to rent buses to take the children and we shared the responsibility with another family. As it was a very friendly family, I only saw advantages. The friend was small and accepted it very well, because he was very close and the families are friends. With the party, we managed to take the two classes of the year, which they were in high school. The negotiation of the theme was also easy, because the two played a lot of a game and chose it as the theme of the party”.
Lawyer Gabriela produced the daughter’s party shared with two children from the same classroom. “We suggested a very peaceful theme, which was Festa Junina, and the children accepted the adventure of celebrating together”.
The difficulty was the number of guests, she said. “Family and friends outside of school participated. So we tried to keep the guests as small as possible, giving priority to school friends and the closest family. Everyone collaborated on reducing invitations to make it possible to join the parties.”
It worked and the economy paid off. “It was all divided into three: decoration, food, drink, place, souvenir and monitors. In the end, the number of people doesn’t increase the price that much and we hit each other very well in the choices, without fights or arguments”.
Disagreements
Journalist Maria Thereza Reis has also shared a party with her daughter. The idea even came from her. At the time, the child was celebrating his 8th birthday with six other children in the classroom. “The children really liked the idea and the group was organized. The choice was for a neutral theme and they happened to be studying the Amazon, so we closed on that. We divided the ideas and tasks at the beginning and organized the fundraising. We think about decoration, souvenirs and cakes”.
But everything went wrong because of one of the mothers. “The other five, myself included, didn’t have any kind of problem, but one didn’t understand the collective spirit of the party. We gave up several things that had already been decided to accept what she wanted. She wanted it to be in the space she chose, with a buffet and entertainers also chosen by her. It made us spend more. The situation was a little unavoidable, because she was very intransigent and we came to the conclusion that we were going to cause an unnecessary fight. Close to the party, she bought other souvenirs, in addition to the one we had already decided on and, of course, shared the bill with us. On the day of the party, she got involved with the decoration”.
Despite the situation, she says the savings were worth it. “The party was a success, however, it could have been much cheaper if we hadn’t made the concessions for a single mother. I think I would only do it again if it was with a more intimate mother,” she stated.
Alternative
The alternative for those who cannot join a group but want to save money is through sharing platforms available on the internet. The savings generated occur for both sides: birthdays and children’s buffets, says the founder of the Festou platform, Marcelo Golfieri.
“With the gain in scale, the buffet can reduce by up to 40% the amount that people would pay for the party if it were exclusive. So, it’s a win-win. The buffet owner wins, who ends up making the space have a capacity closer to its total capacity, and the consumer wins, who, with this gain in scale, has a cost reduction and this also extends, not only to the issue of hiring the party, but also for the hiring of optional services.”
The parties shared in buffets work like this: the party spaces are registered within the platform, which place the offers. The person enters and looks for, for example, a birthday for the month of September, puts the region and some other filters that exist. So she sees in the region of interest which buffets have offers available and dates for the shared party. “From there, you can buy, for example, a package for ten people, from ten people onwards you can have a shared party, which has a cost reduction compared to an exclusive party”, reinforces Golfieri.
The founder guarantees that, through the platform’s technology, shared parties can be scheduled up to the capacity of each buffet, without harming circulation and security. “Let’s assume that a buffet has a capacity for 150 people. So, for example, you can have five birthdays bringing 30 guests each, you can have a party of 50 people and ten more parties of 10 people. This will depend a lot on the structure and capacity of each space, it is an organization that the technology of the platform next to the buffet makes available”.
together and apart
In the shared party, explains Golfieri, what is shared are the toys and the park area. “Each family and their guests have their own cabin where food and drinks are served. The decor is placed inside your stateroom. So there’s no reason to have any kind of conflict. Inside the cabins there is this personalization for the family of the birthday person”.
In the opinion of the platform’s founder, everyone deserves to celebrate. “The shared party is a way of democratizing a very important moment in childhood, which is the birthday party”.
For him, the idea of sharing, already widely used in other services, is here to stay. “It’s about the sharing economy, just like in companies like Uber and Airbnb. Today you have yachts and planes that are being shared. When we look at Airbnb, there is no greater disruption than having your own home and allowing people you don’t know to sleep in the rooms you have available. So if this works on Airbnb, it works at a party, in an outsourced space”, he guarantees.
