There is a specific window — roughly four days either side of a move — when your kitchen does not function and you still have to eat. Handled badly it costs a fortune and you feel awful. Handled well it is genuinely one of the better weeks of the year for eating out.
Here is how to plan it.
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The economics of moving week
Assume seven meals you cannot cook: two on packing day, three on moving day, two while you find the kitchen equipment.
Seven delivery orders for two people at London prices is somewhere between £120 and £200. Seven pub meals is similar. Seven meals planned properly is under £70.
The difference is entirely in planning, not in eating worse.
Use happy hour deliberately
Moving week is the one week of the year when your schedule is flexible enough to actually exploit happy hour, because you are not at work and you are already exhausted at 5pm.
Most London happy hours run 4–7pm on weekdays, which is precisely when you have stopped lifting things and have not yet found the kettle. Two-for-one on mains, half-price small plates, and set menus in that window routinely run at 40–50% of evening prices.
The practical move: book somewhere for 5.30pm on packing day and again on the day after the move. You are not going to feel like cooking either evening and you will spend less than a delivery would cost.
What to eat on moving day specifically
Breakfast: substantial, at home, before anything moves. Whatever your day-one box can produce. Eggs if you have a pan. This is not the meal to skip — people who skip it flag around 11am and become useless.
Midday: sandwiches made the night before. Not a restaurant, not delivery. Nobody stops properly at lunchtime on moving day and if there is nothing to grab, people just do not eat and get irritable. Make them the previous evening and keep them in a bag that does not go in the van.
Evening: order early. Not when you are hungry — before. Saturday evening delivery times in London stretch to well over an hour and everyone hits the wall simultaneously around seven. Order at five for a seven o’clock arrival.
Feeding people who helped
If friends helped you move, feeding them properly is the entire payment and it should be better than pizza.
The move that works: book a table somewhere with a decent set menu for the evening of the move. It gets everyone out of the flat, it marks the end of the day, and it costs less than a round of thank-you gifts.
Set menus and pre-theatre offers are the right tool here — most are available up to 6.30 or 7pm and run £22–£35 a head in central London for two or three courses. Considerably better value than the same restaurant at 8.30.
The student version
Student moves have a different shape. They happen in June and September, they involve less furniture and more logistics, and the budget is tighter.
The relevant saving is not the meals — it is not making the journey twice. Anyone using student moving services that collect and deliver directly avoids the trip-back-for-the-rest problem, which is where the real cost sits. Two trips across the country is a lot of fuel and two days you do not get back.
For the food side: halls kitchens during move-in week are chaotic and frequently under-equipped. The first two days are worth budgeting as eating out. After that, one pan and a chopping board is enough for most of what a student cooks anyway.
Unpacking week
Once you are in, the temptation is to keep ordering because the kitchen is still boxes.
Set a target: kettle, one pan, chopping board, knife, two plates by the end of day two. That is enough to cook properly, and cooking properly on day three is what stops moving week turning into moving fortnight on the takeaway budget.
Also Read: Best Non-Alcoholic Wine for Happy Hour 2026
The one booking worth making in advance
Somewhere for the evening after moving day. Not the day itself — the day after, when the adrenaline has gone and the flat is still full of boxes.
That is the meal people forget to plan and the one they most need.
