My daughter's 6th birthday party is in the afternoon, between mealtimes. After seeing so much pizza get purchased and wasted at kids' parties recently, I put "snacks and cake will be served" on the invitation, and am planning to really just keep it at that - canned beverages for any adults who stay around, juice boxes/mini waters for the kids, and a mix of crunchy salty & sweet snacks - just things like pretzels, chips, popcorn, teddy grahams, etc. - nothing that needs to be hot or cold, since we'll be on a farm.

The question is - do you think it's better to put out big bowls of these types of snacks (like from a large "family size" bag), or to do individual bags of snacks (like the "lunchbox" bags)? I kind of like the individual bags for hygiene reasons, but that definitely limits my options for types of snacks, increases the cost...and I kind of worry that it looks like I didn't even really try to set up snacks, just emptied the CostCo section of our pantry into bowls, haha I know the kids don't care about their dirty hands and I don't expect too many adults will be staying (and therefore eating) anyway.

Thoughts?