Inside the Holiday Pantry: what we actually stock

Every trip we plan includes a first-morning shop, what we call the Holiday Pantry, waiting in the villa or apartment before you arrive. It sounds like a small thing until you've landed after a red-eye flight with a hungry child and nothing in the fridge.

What actually goes in depends entirely on who's staying and how you eat, but a few things show up on almost every list: local cheeses and cured meats from Tenerife's own producers, tomatoes and avocados that taste like they were picked that morning (because they usually were), fresh bread from a bakery near the property rather than a supermarket loaf, and good olive oil.

Built around how you actually eat

We ask about diet and allergies before anyone lands, not as a box to tick but because it changes the whole shop. A gluten-free family gets bread, pasta and snacks that don't need a translated ingredients label at eleven at night on arrival day. Families with young children get what kids will actually eat, not what we'd stock for a couple on a honeymoon: cereal they recognise, fruit that's easy to hand over in the car, something for the inevitable meltdown at the airport.

We also stock proper protein for anyone planning to cook: fresh fish and seafood where we can get it, good chorizo and sausages, chicken and beef from butchers we've used for years. If you're self-catering for a week, that first shop sets the tone for the rest of it.

Not a hotel minibar

The point isn't a luxury hamper with a bow on it. It's landing somewhere that already has coffee for the morning, wine for the evening, and enough real food that day one isn't spent finding a supermarket and working out which aisle has what you need.

Tell us what you'll actually want in the fridge when you land, and we'll have it there before you are.