Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Paying for common meals, was: Re: [C-L]_Common House Sound Proofing

[Kay Argyle (argyle]

[Wasatch Commons, Salt Lake City]  We tried coupon books.  People lost them.
We tried accounts.  The bookkeeping didn't get done.

We've been using meal cards for a couple of years now.  The system works
smoothly with very little effort on anyone's part.

Cards are good for twenty meals.  They are stored in book pockets on a sheet
of poster board in the kitchen hallway.  To purchase a card, put a check in
the Dining Club mail-file (our internal mail is a file box), and the club
treasurer* writes your name on a card and puts it into your household's
pocket. During or after dinner, the cook pulls the cards of everyone at the
meal, marks off a meal, and tucks the cards back into the pockets (if the
card is used up, the cook writes the meal on the back).  *(The Dining Club
has its own checking account.)

(What did the person who suggested this system used to do for a living?  If
you guessed school teacher, very good.)

About once a month, a member of the Dining Club Committee looks at all the
cards and drops a reusable laminated reminder card into the mail-file of
anyone whose card is used up or in the red.

Cards have different denominations -- small child or leftover cards are
$1/meal, medium child cards $2/meal, "club member" cards for $3/meal, and
guest cards for $5/meal (people who never cook or do clean-up use guest
cards).

Cooks post signup/menu sheets a couple of days before the meal.  After the
meal they mark the total number of meals served of each denomination (that
is, how much the meal "earned") and turn the sheet in with their receipts
for reimbursement.  Cooks are encouraged to spend less than what the meal
brought in, but if they go a little over once in a while that's okay.
Recently the Dining Committee has said that cooks can announce a higher
price for special meals.

Kay

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