Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Good/Problematic Community Meals Programs

[Anita Landino (alandino13]

Wow, Sharon Thank you so much for sharing this wealth of wisdom, experience and 
information here! !


Anita Lan​dino
"What makes you feel light, connected and alive?"

Territories of the chalá·at (Hoh), kʷoʔlí·yot’ (Quileute), qʷidiččaʔa·tx̌ 
(Makah), nəxʷsƛ̕áy̕əm̕  (Klallam), & t͡ʃə́mqəm (Chimacum) peoples

________________________________
From: Cohousing-L <cohousing-l-bounces+alandino13=outlook.com [at] 
cohousing.org> on behalf of Sharon Villines via Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] 
cohousing.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2024 5:58 PM
To: Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Cc: Sharon Villines <sharon [at] sharonvillines.com>; Chapel, Thomas 
(CDC/NCIPC/DOP) <tkc4 [at] cdc.gov>
Subject: Re: [C-L]_ Good/Problematic Community Meals Programs

> On Jun 12, 2024, at 3:58 PM, Chapel, Thomas (CDC/NCIPC/DOP) via Cohousing-L 
> <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org> wrote:
>
> Can you be more specific about the factors you need to consider and I am 
> happy to offer some guidance/ I think our approach goes over well. Currently 
> and since the pandemic we have less people stepping up to cook, but beyond 
> that I think we have a good approach to menus, accommodating diets, payment, 
> cleanup etc. and am happy to share.

For almost 25 years we have tried to start a meal program that was steady and 
inclusive and met people’s needs for being able to sign up online. And handling 
the money.

For individual meals, we settled on the payment of $5 if you were eating and 
didn’t cook or clean up. These would be scheduled on holidays and occasionally 
during the week or brunches on weekends. We had potluck/cookouts on the summer 
national holidays.

Some people would also do what can only be called banquets. Cooking Thai, for 
example. They were so wonderful that other people were intimidated.

We’ve tried all kinds of sign ups — on paper, google docs, etc. We’ve tried 
paying cash in the moment and billing.

For several years we had Soup ’n Simple on Monday nights. It was to be simple 
meals that you would have at home on a weeknight. The number of people signed 
up determined how long the rotation lasted. Everyone had to cook or clean and 
no money exchanged hands. People formed teams of 3 which were pretty stable in 
membership and menus. One team of 3 always did tacos, for example. Most 
rotations lasted 6-8 weeks, some longer, depending on the number of teams 
signed up. It usually lapsed in the summer.  People who were not part of the 
rotation could ask the cooks if they had room for another single person and 
they would pay the cook $5.

The problem with that method was that people had to commit to a period of weeks 
since they paid for the meal they cooked for everyone and would want to eat the 
meals others cooked in return. It was always on Monday and not everyone could 
attend on Monday. As a non-participant, it wasn’t always comfortable to eat and 
pay. The regulars became a subgroup of themselves. it wasn’t a huge problem but 
once a member insisted that we had discussed an issue and made a membership 
decision. I said it had never been discussed in a membership meeting. But he 
was adamant. Then he thought about it and realized it had been discussed at 
Soup ’n Simple. The weight of that dinner discussion had registered with him as 
a community decision.

Even though we have tried everything anyone suggested — even bring your own 
dinner— nothing became frequent enough to be predictable.
‘
Since September we have had a program that I think will continue. It is working 
very well. A small team of people got together to discuss why previous programs 
had worked or not worked. They did polls of the community asking for more 
feedback. They ran a trial of 6-8 weeks and did another evaluation asking for 
feedback.

Several other teams had done the same thing over the years but except for Soup 
’n Simple programs had soon petered out. The thing that has made all the 
difference this time is using the Mosaic software to schedule, signup, and pay 
for meals. It works.Everything is done online so everyone has 24/7 access even 
if they are in Africa or at a farm in Wyoming. The software is reliable and 
works for everyone which Google Docs doesn’t. Some people refuse to signup for 
a Google account and others get confused about where to find forms to sign up.

By using Mosaic, the sign ups, the payments, the ability to record dietary 
restrictions, etc are all in one place. And it allows much more individual 
variation. Some of the most important features are:

1. People can sign up individually or one person might sign up everyone in 
their household.

2. Households and individuals have records in the program (a database) so the 
same information can be used in all parts of the system and entered from 
drop-down menus. This links all information for each person or household for 
meals, workshare, billing, and payment. I can go to my page to see the meals I 
have signed up to eat, to cook or clean, and how much I owe. We use Venmo to 
accept payments. Cooks receive credit toward meals when they submit receipts.

3. The cooks can decide the cost of meals and other details individually. The 
standard budget amount is $5 per meal. Cooks can charge more for a meal that 
includes roasted salmon or beef brisket or Nigerian wonders.

4. Cooks decide what options are available:  Most meals are vegetarian but 
people can request vegan. Options can include non-gluten, vegan, late plates, 
etc. Many cooks have recently stopped making late plates because it became too 
complicated to manage serving tables, making late plates, and keeping them all 
separate in the kitchen. If someone wants a late plate they can ask someone at 
the meal to fill a plate for them.

5. Cooks can specify a limit of eaters. 20-30 is the average number of eaters 
but some cooks want to cook for no more than 20. Some have been limited to 15. 
That is the cook’s choice. We have so many more meals that people don’t feel 
closed out by limits.

6. Each meal has a sign up line for a cook and two helpers, plus a fourth 
optional if needed. The cook schedules a meal and may or may not ask particular 
people to be helpers. Anyone can sign up in an empty line. For example, one 
person who seems to enjoy the process of running around collecting empty plates 
and filling the dishwasher signs up as the Optional person on many meals. It’s 
10 minutes of great exercise. There is plenty of opportunities for someone to 
find a place to sign up as a helper without prearranging anything with the 
cook. The cook will contact everyone a few days before the meal if they want to 
prearrange tasks.

7. When you sign up for a meal, you can see all the signups — the cooks and 
helpers, the menu, and the others who have signed up. The cook can send a 
message to everyone signed up for the meal about menu changes, date changes, 
reminders, etc. You can enable a personal reminder for yourself whenever you 
want it — 2 days before, 2 hours before, etc. All this is programmed into the 
software so there is extra work for anyone. The program knows your email 
address.

8. Signups can be automatically closed at a specific time or after a set number 
of people have signed up.

9 Meal times can also be set by the Cook. Some like 6:00 and others 7:00 or 
7:30. It depends on the menu and the cook’s personal schedule. Some menus may 
not be appropriate for kids so they may be scheduled later. People may not want 
to eat with all the children in the room so they may avoid the 6:00 meal.

10. Cooks can choose any day or date to schedule a meal — weeknights, weekends, 
dinner, lunch, or brunch. Anytime they believe that a sufficient number of 
eaters will be available.

11. Cooks can plan unique things as well. A Nigerian meal had no knives or 
forks. Meals can be scheduled outside.

The whole program feels so free and the calendar has been filled with 2-3 meals 
each week. Almost no meals have had to be rescheduled for lack for lack of 
helpers or eaters. Once or twice cooks have rescheduled for illness or 
unexpected work travel.

All the tension around the standardization of meal times, days, costs, etc, are 
gone. There are so many meals that each one doesn’t have to have all the 
options of all the possible eaters. No one has been excluded. Cooks try to meat 
dietary restrictions but if they can’t, they can say so.

Gone are the reminders or cancellations because we have a dinner pre-scheduled 
for Thursday but no helpers have signed up.

TRUST ME ON THIS — You can’t do this without the software or perhaps 1-2 
members who take on the scheduling themselves. The software has eliminated the 
need for standardization of times, days, costs, options, etc. Each meal is 
individually designed. There are of course some things that are the same 
because they work better, not because members had to make compromises to have 
any meal program at all.

All communities can ask for a Mosaic site to be set up for their community. 
There is no cost or obligation that the community agree to use the site before 
Sean will set one up for you. There is a sandbox site you can look at but all 
the features are as well-developed as they would be if you work with Sean to 
set up the features you want to use.

Mosaic was designed as open-source software by Sean Davey for his community, 
Sonora Cohousing, to do everything from calendaring to billing for years before 
he offered it to other communities in about 2010.

This is the home page with details on all of the features (I copied some in 
below) and links to the demonstration site.

https://cohousing.site/

You can also contact Sean directly:   sean [at] sonoracohousing.com
Or contact me for anything I might be able to answer: sharon [at] 
sharonvillines.com

> - password protected accounts
> - contact list for community members
> - multiple calendars with reminders and sign up (e.g. community calendar, 
> meal calendar, guest room calendar, team calendars)
> - group pages for committees/teams, easy joining/leaving of groups, 
> membership list, documents
> - photo gallery
> - meeting planner
> - archived minutes, community decisions and values
> - content management (documents with online editing, download files, links to 
> websites, etc.)
> - simple accounting system for HOA dues, common meals, guest room usage, 
> annual budgeting, etc.
> - email lists for whole community and groups/teams
> - shared lists (e.g. lost and found, recommendations, recipes, movies)
> - online surveys
> - private household pages for contacts, notes, recipes, todo list
> - comments and online discussions
> - companion site for sharing photos, recipes, messages, etc. with friends and 
> family outside the community
> - host your community's public site as well
> - possibility of custom code to meet your community's needs

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org




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