Meals minutes: 2017-10-02

Minutes:

Great Oak Meals Committee Meeting Minutes
10/2/2017

Present: Catherine, Yi-Miau, Terrence, Tammy


AGENDA
Planning alternative community meeting (servsafe, Dec 6)
Improvement: place setting, non food-contact surfaces
Meeting night meals format
2017 growing season wrap-up (tabled for next meeting)
Communication/Housekeeping
Scheduler’s show-and-tell
2018 winter season outlook: Weekday late dinner


***
PLANNING ALTERNATIVE COMMUNITY MEETING (Servsafe, Dec. 6)
Tammy will be meeting with Patti and Gayle to plan the alternative meeting.

Tammy envisions explaining why certain things are important and which risk
factors are specific to Great Oak. Would like to set up the infrastructure
before the meeting so things are ready to go. Examples: making one sink for
handwashing (move the soap dispenser to the opposite side); setting up
sanitizer buckets so that all surfaces can be cleaned before meal prep.

They will get back to the Meals Committee before our next meeting (Oct. 29)
which will give us a month to do any prep and to finalize what will happen
at the alternative meeting.

HEAD COOK INPUT: We clarified our process for checking in with head cooks
about how things are going with their meals.

IMPROVEMENT: PLACE SETTING, NON FOOD-CONTACT SURFACES
Suggestion to use silverware caddies. We are interested in purchasing
single samples of various types of caddies and evaluating them. Yi-Miau
will ask Katie to order three or four types of caddies.

MEETING NIGHT MEALS FORMAT
The current format is one meeting night orderer (1 hour) and one cleaner
(1.5 hours). Neighbors doing the orderer job have been doing it in three
ways in the past year. Yi-Miau reported the three varieties, and the costs
and attendances (with cost data provided by Becky H.) of these meals.

Traditional pizza or sandwiches average $8/adult, with sign-ups averaging
below 10 people.

Cook a light meal instead average $5/adult, on average 13 people sign up.

Catering style, ordering from new places, get a platter of food, e.g., El
Harrisa, Oasis Mediterranean average $6/adult, average 20 people sign up.

Lowering the price of meeting night meals could encourage greater
participation. We have been charging a pantry fee for these meals, and we
don’t have to do that. Removing pantry fee from the charge formula would
offer a discount.

People who want to cook need to do so in a way that does not put additional
work on the cleaner beyond that of a takeout meal. The bottom line
expectation is that they should wash their own pots and pans, and hopefully
minimize cleaner work such as by using disposable plates, etc. We will add
this to the job description and communicate via email to current meeting
night orderers and to the community as a whole.

A few catering style meals have worked out very positively -- more diners
at a reasonable meal price. We want to facilitate more of these catering
meals by doing the following:

-- Capture knowledge about ordering from various restaurants and make it
available for meeting night orderers on the Wiki. For example, Susan shared
info about ordering from Oasis “Think outside of the box. In this town
there are many good carry out options, and/or there are lots of places that
will deliver much more than they think. I even found out that Oasis, who I
ordered from on S. University, would have delivered all that food if I had
just ordered it one day in advance. Also, to make sure you check the
paper plates and cups situation before you order. Many places will include
plastic ware, plates and cups for free when you order the kind of
quantities we would eat at a GO dinner. Examples of places like Cardamom
for Indian, Oasis for Mideastern, or Big Salad for offering a variety of
meal type salads would work great for our community.”

-- Communication: we will add more ordering info in the job description,
and communicate to the community about what we’ve learned about the types
of meeting night meals diners prefer. Terrence will update the job
description; Yi-Miau will draft an email and Tammy will help with
word-smithing.

FARM MEAL WRAP-UP (Farmer is cooking us dinner, more discussion Tabled for
next meeting)

COMMUNICATION/HOUSEKEEPING
“To go” containers that can be used to assemble late plates and to bring
home leftovers. The batch donated to Meals a year ago is running out.
Catherine will ask Debbi to buy more.

SCHEDULER’S SHOW AND TELL

The idea is to share the "how" behind the scenes of scheduling optimization
(as technical as is appropriate). This should be very relevant for all
neighbors since many take scheduling survey. And our goal is to identify
neighbors who are interested in being involved (at least in some
components) of the job so Willie and the committee can design a small
co-coordinator job knowing what neighbors may be interested in doing.

This is on the stock of community meeting agenda. Willie OK either Oct 16
or Nov 20.


MEALS INNOVATIONS: Tevah made great use of the new “send message to diners”
feature on Gather. For her Rosh Hashana meal to celebrate Jewish New Year
she made Pomegranate BBQ baked tofu. Her message “May your year be as full
of good deeds as the fruit is full of seeds” shared the symbolism of her
menu with the diners in advance of the meal.


2018 WINTER SEASON OUTLOOK: WEEKDAY LATE DINNER
We are exploring ways to diversify dinner serving time to meet the needs of
neighbors. We discussed how to address the concerns about the impact on
meal workers if a meal gets scheduled as a “late” meal. People need to know
which hours they are signing up for, preferably during the meal scheduling
survey. We also need to survey all meals workers about their general
willingness and availability.

We are thinking of piloting late meals twice a month, this should generate
enough occurrences for people to try out. Yi-Miau will develop a survey and
Tammy will test it.

Then we discussed the timing of such a pilot program. One idea was to make
late meals be on the weeks that we have meetings so people would know when
to expect them. We could select 2 meals in a month on the OFF week when
there are no meetings.

Those meals need to be put on the schedule way in advance so the Meals
Scheduler has the necessary lead time. We need to let Willie know we are
thinking about this and find out what it means for him as the Meals
Scheduler. Yi-Miau will draft an email to Willie about Meals Scheduling and
early/late meals.

NEXT MEETINGS:
October 29
December 10
January 14

NEW MONKEYS --
Yi-Miau will ask Katie to order three or four types of caddies.
Terrence will update the job description for meeting night ordering.
Yi-Miau will draft an email about the meeting night orderer job.
Yi-Miau will develop a survey for meals workers about availability for
late/early meals and Tammy will test it.
Yi-Miau will draft an email to Willie about Meals Scheduling and early/late
meals.
Catherine will ask Debbi to buy more “to go” containers for leftovers.

MONKEYS FROM SEPTEMBER MEETING:
DONENew worker check-ins--email job description and check in about how it’s
going doing the new job:
Glenn new to dinner clean (Yi-Miau)
Glenn assistant cook (Terrence)
Emily head cook (Terrence)
Emily assistant cook (Catherine)
Terrence assistant cook (Yi-Miau)
Polly assistant cook (Catherine)
DONE Catherine will follow up with one head cook about some of the concerns
that she raised.
DONE Yi-Miau will send meal worker job descriptions to go-talk.
DONE Yi-Miau, for the fall work days, will add this to the fall workday job
sheet:
We will put the gas tanks in the storage “cage” and move the grills back
under the CH porch roof, along with a reminder to let the head cooks know
about the change.
DONE Yi-Miau will follow up with the interested person to ask whether they
are willing to gather some more information about the possible use of
silverware caddies.
DONE Yi-Miau will invite Tammy to come to a Meals meeting for help with
planning the meeting.

Elph will post the numbers of dishes that we are keeping in our inventory.

RE-MONKEY We will all try to talk to community members at GO about what
they want out of these ideas. Hoop house

RE-MONKEY We will all follow up with head cooks (the same ones we remind to
post their menus) to ask how their meals went:
What did you like best about your dinner?
What were your biggest challenges with this meal?
Do you have any advice for other cooks in a similar situation?
Terrence--will check in with Sunday head cooks
Yi-Miau--will check in with Monday head cooks
Catherine--will check in with Tuesday head cooks
Elph--will check in with Wednesday head cooks


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