Meals minutes: 2018-12-03

Minutes:

Meals Committee Meeting Minutes 12/3/2018



Present: Gail, Yi-Miau, Kathy, Becky H.



Agenda

Meals accounts/balance

GATHER 6.1 released - clarifying billing and meal finalizing process for
Great Oak

Purchase decisions

January/February meal scheduling - updates?

Cook and cleaners check-ins

Matters arising



Summary for December meeting

Willie, Meals scheduler, will send Meals shifts scheduling surveys soon to
schedule January and February shits. Please take the survey and note the
next survey will be in February. Kathy B. and Becky H., Meals Billers, are
Meals’ contact point for billing and accounts management. They reported
that committee’s finance has recovered from Spring and they will keep
monitor the cash flow. We are trying a couple of potluck meal in the new
year, stay tuned.



Discussions

GATHER 6.1 released – clarifying billing and meal finalizing process for
Great Oak

Retain printable reimbursement form as is. Our current meal finalizing
practice is cooks to submit paper reimbursement form to Billers. Billers
then edits meal signup to finalize the meals on Gather electronically. It
has worked robustly. New feature on Gather 6.1 allows cooks to edit
reimbursement form electronically themselves. We discuss the tradeoffs of
this paper-less potential. The committee and billers are concerned about
novel responsibilities added to Head Cooks. Billers have been doing it,
they are familiar with common errors and they check for those routinely.
These mistakes won’t go away. There is also a concern that communication
might become messier when more people edit the form. We haven’t heard
desire to use the electronic option so will leave current practice as is
and not adopt the new feature.



What Great Oak Billers do?

Admin and Billing. Billers’ administration roles are setting up new member
accounts, adjusting account balance limits per requests from membership
committee. Both Kathy and Becky H. are happy to continue these
responsibilities but ask Gail G. to stay on admin as a supporting role when
neither of the Billers is around. You can reach admin and billers by
email: eat at gocoho.org or look up roles to reach them individually for
questions.



Balance?

Current balance $1,452 and $500 in saving.



Purchases?

Yi-Miau to ask updates about blender purchase.

Teflon fry pan – we’ll go ahead and ask shoppers to purchase a couple of
those. We agree with Tammy about buying cheap and replacing often. We
want to ask Shopper to let us know when the new Teflon pan is being
replaced.

Yi-Miau to ask shoppers.



Jan 14 and March 6, organized potluck

We are trying a couple of organized potluck for nights that used to be
meeting nights. The meetings night orderers that are scheduled on those
night would be responsible for potluck organizing (see Tweaked Jobs from
August). We discussed the suggestion to order one main dish, post the menu
in advance, and ask neighbors to bring other dishes to go share. The idea
is to assure there is sufficient protein for the meal. We appreciate the
thoughts and like the suggestion.



Email from 8/27/2018

…. (delete the part on servsafe implementation)

Tweaked Jobs: With some meetings being moved to weekend, we needed to
decide what to do with the meeting night meal labor attached to those
meals. Some people did not want to lose the option of a meal on those
nights, so we would like to try the idea of doing them as a potluck.
So if you are assigned to be the meeting night takeout orderer and are
scheduled on a night when there is no meeting, then you would be
responsible for potluck organizing - send an email and/or post signs to the
community reminding them about the potluck, setting up the tables, etc.
Meeting night cleaners for those nights would be responsible for
post-potluck cleanup.

.. (delete the part on committee welcomes new members)


Matters arising – suggestion to meal signup

* On the topic of last minute sign ups, please remember cooking time can be
very busy. It is best to show up in person to inquire if you are unsure
whether email, text or phone call would reach the cooks.
*

* Please ask if you don’t know the late sign up option *

One Head Cook suggests to restore a late signup setting. In the Meal
system we had before GATHER, cooks can specify how many late sign-ups they
want to add to their meals. This is not a current feature on GATHER.

One cook uses “capacity setting” to indicate his late-signup capacity. For
example, if you have 35 ppl signed up at the time when closing the meal,
you could limit the capacity to 40. Diners can change signups (to add or
remove signups) whenever the meal is “open”. Head Cooks can close and
re-open the meals as they wish.

When a meal is at full capacity, Head Cooks could also indicate “no space
available” on title.

A point was made that these extra spots increase meal cost if they were not
taken. Cooks usually try to cook enough food within a budget guidance.
The guidance is generated by “grocery calculator” on Gather based on
community’s cost sharing formula and the number of dinners. It’s a helpful
reference for cooks. Diners can consult Meals reports on GATHER for
average meals costs.



Matters arising – meals accessible to kids

On the vision of growing community connection through meals, feeling
grateful for cooks to consider dietary needs, neighbors volunteer to
organize monthly brunches, things like late sign-ups, late plates, earlier
serving time on Sunday etc. The work has been to make meals work for all
neighbors at least for some of the times. It helps to understand why
neighbors use or do not use common meals. We also share the normal ebb and
flow of participation. We discussed (a little bit) the idea to make meals
more accessible to kids which does not require much extra work. One
neighbor has offered to collect ingredients/food that kids will eat, we
will follow up on this as the first step.



MONKEYS

(done) Yi-Miau to add Billers to Gather role “Billers”

Yi-Miau to let shopper know about frying pan purchase

Yi-Miau to follow up on blender purchase



Next meetings

Jan 13

Feb 11
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