Meals minutes: 2017-12-10

Minutes:

Great Oak Meals Committee Meeting Minutes

12/10/2017

Present: Catherine, Yi-Miau, Terrence, Elph, Becky H., Willie, Ken Winter &
Suzanne Winter (from Sunward)


AGENDA

Meals balances (bi-monthly billers attendant:*Becky H.)

2018 early Sunday meal pilot--to do list

2018 serving weekday later meal --rethinking

2017 growing season (farm meal program) wrap-up TABLED FOR NEXT MEETING

Communication/Housekeeping TABLED FOR NEXT MEETING

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MEALS BALANCES

Kathy is sick tonight, so Becky is filling in for her to give the Meals
Biller report.

There are a few outstanding reimbursement checks from 2014 and 2015. Kathy
would like to write those checks off. As a committee, we need to determine
our process. Decision: after 6 months, we will credit the meals account of
any head cook who did not cash their reimbursement check.

Our current balance, if all of our outstanding checks were cashed today,
would be $1000.

Kathy proposes keeping a balance of approximately $800 in the Meals account.

Purchase request for a new immersion blender for about $70. Elph will order.

A second issue that we need a policy for is when head cooks don’t include
receipts with their reimbursement requests. It happens with some
regularity--3 times in the past two months.

We prefer to have receipts but will reimburse head cooks who submit
reimbursement requests even without the receipts.

Another issue is our policy when head cooks don’t submit for a
reimbursement at all.

Our current policy is to pay a head cook $50 in this case, because we must
close out the books at the end of the month. Another idea would be to
charge the cost of the average meal. However, this doesn’t impact many
cooks so perhaps it is not worth making a change to the policy. We will
focus on communication and keep the policy the same for now.

MEALS JOB SCHEDULING

We schedule about 60 - 70 meals per 4 month work season.

Willie puts out a calendar asking people for their availability and then
assigns the jobs.

Using Gather, Willie must enter each meal manually. This takes about 4 -5
hours to do it all. Yi-Miau had the idea of adding an assistant to enter
the meals. Another suggestion is to pay the designer of Gather (Touchstone
resident Tom Smyth) to create an import feature.

Willie will approach Tom Smyth about adding the import feature to Gather.
If more than $200 Willie will bring it back to Meals for discussion.


2018 EARLY SUNDAY MEAL PILOT

Sunday meals moving to 5:30. The only concern raised is to make sure the
meal time is clearly indicated on meal sign ups and planned well ahead of
time so meals workers know when they sign up for shifts.

Reminders from Gather will include the time of the meal (as long as it’s
entered into the system correctly.)

At least one head cook is worried about remembering the time change. Ways
to help people remember the new time? Terrance will remind Sunday cooks
about the time change. Yi-Miau will make some posters to remind diners.

Post-meeting addendum: Willie cannot create meals with the times in the
title. All fields for the meal must be populated at once, meaning that the
head cook must do it, or perhaps we can go in and enter it once the head
cook has posted the meal. We’ll figure out how to make this happen.

Cooking shifts will begin at 3:15

Meal served at 5:30

Cleaning will begin at 6:15

We will continue with the 15 minute intervals for taking food:

5:45 okay to take seconds

6:00 okay to take leftovers if you were signed up for the meal

6:15 anyone can take leftovers

First early Sunday dinner will be on January 7th.


2018 SERVING WEEKDAY LATER MEAL--RETHINKING

Because of the work involved in adding more meals to have a later meal, we
were asked to make a proposal to the community before making this kind of
change.

We discussed a different idea about supporting individuals to create new
and different meals, with support from the Meals Committee and the current
infrastructure.

Another idea--add meals that support special projects, such as if we had a
tree trimming day, Meals could organize a lunch for that day.

Another new idea--“Open table” at meals to discuss meal ideas from the
community. To offer resources for people’s initiative who have ideas of
“other ways to do meals.”

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Intention keep the conversation going about later meals.
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Informal way to collect ideas.
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Each Meals Committee member can host one Open Table. We will email the
community ahead of time, referring to the minutes.

We realized that these creative new ideas don’t actually help with the
issue of trying out later meals. We’ll go ahead and have a discussion
together as the Meals Committee at dinner on December 20th, and decide
where to take the idea from there.

We will also continue to think about the later meal. One new idea we had
was to make it (always or just sometimes) an order-in meal, to offer the
option to eat with neighbors later without adding so many hours to the work
system.

SERVSAFE TRAINING

Patti will organize an alternative meeting in the next work season, with
Tammy’s help, to hold a community training on food and kitchen safety.

NEXT MEETINGS:

January 14

NEW MONKEYS

Elph will order a new immersion blender.

Willie will approach Tom Smyth about adding the import feature to Gather.
If more than $200 Willie will bring it back to Meals for discussion.

Terrance will remind Sunday cooks about the time change.

Yi-Miau will make some posters to remind diners.

Yi-Miau will ask Willie if he will/can add 5:30 time into Sunday Meal title
for new work season

Open dinner meeting for Meals Committee members on Dec 20

Yi-Miau will email Terrance to find out which night works for him for open
table

Yi-Miau will ask Katie to get feedback from table setters and diners about
caddies.