Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Meal Tracking Programs

[Ann Zabaldo (zabaldo]

Diana — it’s just the people signed up in the rotation. 

About 15-20+ adults participate in the one meal a week.  Everyone is on a team 
that cooks once during the rotation.  The meal price is fixed at $4.00 per 
person.  The team buys the food, cooks and cleans ONCE during the rotation.  If 
a participant doesn’t show up for a meal … he/she can have a plate saved.  But 
no money changes hands.  

I learned the above system visiting a cohousing community in Denmark in 1999.  
I was struck by the simplicity of it all.

We tried a number of systems here at TVC before settling on this one.  They 
involved index cards, forms, cash, checks change, collections …

The systems showing up on this thread now make my eyes cross.  Spreadsheets?  
Google Docs?  Forms?  Couldn’t we just eat together?


Best --

Ann Zabaldo
Takoma Village Cohousing
Washington, DC
Principal, Cohousing Collaborative, LLC
Falls Church VA
703-688-2646


On Apr 2, 2014, at 4:18 PM, Diana Carroll <dianaecarroll [at] gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> Holy moly, you have 100% attendance at every meal?  I don't think we've had
> a single event at which we had 100% attendance.  That's pretty
> impressive!!!!
> 
> We've never found a technological solution that really satisfies our needs
> as a community.  We ask cooks to keep track of signups, which they do in
> whatever way works best for them.  Most use Google Forms to allow people to
> sign up, but some have other systems or ask for just an email to indicate
> signup.
> 
> Cooks need to get the data into a spreadsheet that can be passed to the
> volunteer who handles money (we have a "per meal" payment system), and I
> understand that the Google Forms let that happen pretty easily, which is
> why I think so many choose to do it.
> 
> Sign up data includes who is eating, what unit they are in (for billing
> purposes), whether they are eating a child-sized or adult portion (also for
> billing purposes), and information cooks need for meal planning like which
> dish they want if multiple dishes are offered; any allergies or special
> requests; whether they will need a "late plate" and so on.
> 
> Diana
> 
> 
> On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 4:08 PM, Ann Zabaldo <zabaldo [at] earthlink.net> 
> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> Sharon --
>> 
>> We have ONE meal a week here at TVC.   Since everyone in the rotation
>> attends every meal in the rotation you only have to sign up ONCE to cook.
>> You don't sign up for every meal.   That's it. One time.  Do you think
>> having a more sophisticated computerized system would produced more meals?
>> If more meals is your goal I don't think a better tracking system is going
>> to produce that.
>> 
>> Do you have another goal?  Something I'm not hearing?
>> 
>> On Mar 13, 2014, at 1:39 PM, Sharon Villines <sharon [at] sharonvillines.com>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> Katie mentioned that they have a great mealtracking program. What do you
>> use? And what do others use?
>>> 
>>> We are still paper and pencil on a bulletin board and I find it very
>> inconvenient. There could be many more possibilities if we had it online.
>>> 
>>> Sharon
>>> ----
>>> Sharon Villines
>>> Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
>>> http://www.takomavillage.org
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> Best --
>> 
>> Ann Zabaldo
>> Takoma Village Cohousing
>> Washington, DC
>> Principal, Cohousing Collaborative, LLC
>> Falls Church VA
>> 703-688-2646
>> 
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