Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Common meals

[Elizabeth Magill (pastorlizm]

As far as pricing I'm a big fan of the method we used: we guessed.

We started at I think $3.50 for dinner, $3 for breakfast. After 8 or 9 or 12 
months we looked at the figures, asked the cooks how hard it was to cook to 
that budget, and then adjusted the price using actual data. (Half portions are 
half price.)
Everything went up 50cents.

We also charge for leftovers (about $1 for a meals worth), people mark an x in 
the box next to their name. That has added a great deal of flexibility to the 
whole meals system, the extra money covers potential buyers (who are free) and 
other miscellaneous needs.

Cooks can be reimbursed as much as $5 per person for a meal, but most try to 
aim for the $3.50 per person. We get some amazingly extravagant meals for that.

Any cook may instead have an at cost meal--then the cost of the ingredients are 
divided by the folk who signed up and that is the cost.

As far as billing--I don't know.

-Liz
(The Rev.) Elizabeth M. Magill
www.ecclesiaministriesmission.org
www.mosaic-commons.org
508-450-0431




On Apr 12, 2016, at 8:03 PM, Rita Bullinger <ritabullinger [at] gmail.com> 
wrote:

> 
> Can anyone anywhere offer ideas for organizing the pricing and record-keeping 
> of common meals?
> We are about to have a common house!! I welcome any ideas!
> 
> Thanks so much.
> 
> Rita Bullinger
> Germantown Commons, Nashville
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