Cohousing-L Mailing List: Is Songaia Food Program unique?

[Craig Ragland (craigragland]

I just got home from Costco, where I helped my wife with shopping for
Songaia Cohousing (13 units, 38 people, 11 acres near Seattle). As I hauled
in 20 pounds of cheese, I was reminded of a question I've often been asked
that I've been unable to answer:

Is Songaia's food program unique within the cohousing movement? And if so,
why?

Our program has a flat fee of $85/month per adult and $5/year-of-age/month
for kids, although the FFF (Fabulous Food Folk) are likely to raise our
prices soon to respond to increased interest in organic foods.

It consists of three main elements:

(1) Five Common Meals per week: M-Th dinners, plus Sat breakfasts - everyone
helps cook/clean
(2) Community Pantry of 100+ items, plus many spices and teas: members
freely draw food from the pantry with no tracking (our shoppers just keep it
stocked)
(3) Community Exchange of ~20 items (batteries, light bulbs, etc.) which we
buy in bulk, then members purchase (accounted for and settled monthly)

I know we're not unique in our common meals, although from the cohousing
directory, it appears we share more meals than most cohousing communities.
We are, I think, unusual in having fixed monthly fees, rather than
individual, per-meal accounting?

Are there other cohousing groups with a Common Pantry? All of our members
may draw freely from our pantry with no accountability as to how much
different families eat. I have witnessed similar models in non-cohousing
communities, but would like to learn more about other cohousing communities?

I expect some cohousing communities use variants of the Community Exchange
model, as it seems a minor variation from how some communities run their
common meals (i.e., different prices per meal, member cost being based on
attendance). I believe I've heard of some communities that charge for common
meal left-overs, which is similar.

In curiousity, Craig

P.S. Joani Blank wrote an excellent article in 2001 on common meals for
Cohousing Magazine which is now freely available on cohousing.org:

http://www.cohousing.org/livingincoho_meals.aspx

It reinforces my curiousity about whether Songaia's more comprehensive
program is unique. If others have common pantries, I'd love to exchange some
information.