Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Are meals an optional or required work expectation in your community?

[R.P. Aditya (aditya]

On Sat, Mar 04, 2006 at 07:50:11AM -0500, Maggi Rohde wrote:
> On Mar 4, 2006, at 7:44 AM, Melisa Schuster wrote:
> >An average of 35 to 50 people eat there every night, and many nights 
> >we are at capacity (64+).  Our census is 90 (60 adults, 30 kids).
> 
> Melisa -- how do you guys count kids?  Currently we don't, and I'm 
> wondering how that's working for you.

Melisa reads the list in digest form I believe, so rather than leave you
waiting for the answer, I'll answer about how Great Oak does these things :-)

If you mean how do we charge for non-adult meals, then the breakdown is:

Teens pay 75% of adults 

Big kids (older than 6 years) pay 50% of adults 

Little kids (1-5) don't pay (and cooks often make some simple food for them
that might be more appealing to the picky eaters)

If you mean how do we count places in the dining room -- it's imperfect -- we
count anyone who takes up a place, adult or kid as 1 place...though we have
extra high-chairs and booster seats -- counting also is used by cooks to
determine the type and amount of food since signups are done by category
(adult, adult veg, teen, teen veg, big kid, little kid).

> Also, who keeps track of who does what work?

In general, each committee is responsible for determining how they keep track
of what work gets done (or not done). For meal jobs, we have a schedule meal
workers sign up for in advance (usually 2-3 months in advance). So each meal
crew is known in advance and if they opt to, receive an email reminder when
they have an upcoming shift.

Let me know if you have additional questions,
Adi