I feel the portions were a bit small to feed an adult. I understand that cooking with volunteers is a lot of work.
Here’s my suggestion.
To keep the quality up, while not burning up the staff, scope the number of folks that can reasonably be fed. This defines the number of registered folks that can get cooked meals. This will become crucial as cft grows. If not consider catering/pizza delivery some nights or for part of the meals to cut down the work of the cooking staff.
I would forego the cold meals option for attendees and drop reg price.
One sandwich does not suffice, so anyways attendees have to bring food. Why bother the cooking staff to make sandwiches, it’s a boring job. If you keep the sandwich option, just drop cold food on the table and have attendees make their own. I’d leave one staffer with directions to prevent folks from grabbing a ton and wasting it, forcing attendees to come back for more.
For breakfast, and brunch i’d say have some fruits, apples bananas grapes oranges… so we provide healthy foods too.
Also, provide hot water and maybe tea and coffee, if you still keep attendee foods in place.
All in all, the hot dinners were great, the sandwiches not really a tradition worth saving.
If you want to keep common meals, to increase group mixing, then find a scalable solution to handle 300.
I totally agree with your feedback! It’s a little early to be promising anything yet, but we are looking at making some big changes to the kitchen next year, probably including:
bigger, more alluring breakfasts for everyone, hopefully even coffee/tea/juice and other perks for Patrons/Sponsors
Overhauling lunch serving to better accommodate the way people tend to be coming back and forth from the waterfall and passing the kitchen, having fewer sandwiches put out at a time so they aren’t stale by the time you find them, and having more choices of stuff to go with / be on the sandwiches
CONDIMENTS
more seating in the dining area, to help keep people from wandering back to their own camps, thus also improving coverage of staff announcements. IMO communal meals are a central part of the CFT atmosphere, so I want to keep them around - we just need to make them better for reaching everyone!
More kitchen and clean-up staff in general
Every meal of the day is important, and we want to make sure people get what they pay for when they register
having 2 tiers of food is imho not worth it, knowing 70% or more opt for full meals.
you could decide to do cold cuts for everyone at lunch, freeing staff of one duty, just make it better and plentiful ingredients. tbh wonder bread, kraft cheese and basic ham is really just survival food. i’d rather payto get proschuito, dried salame, and good ham but i can afford stuff.
having a non-food attendee class is mostly to cut reg price to allow low budget folks to attend, and spend the saved money on their own food.
Like @Devin said, we have plans to overhaul a good portion of our meals in the coming year.
As the kitchen second, I can assure that we will work on improving our meals for the next years. I really like adding in fruits and vegetables in. It’d make for more balanced meals, and in the case of the bananas Sunday morning its good for the hangover too
So, thanks for the input, we will consider all this for the following year!
I think the cleanup/bussing process could use a few changes:
A dedicated trashcan near the dish area for scrapings (we got one later in the weekend, and it helped).
More obvious dish-doing workflow, so that people know where to start and what to do at each bucket, so the wash water is used for washing and the rinse water stays cleaner. Something so easy and obvious that people could do it when they’re drunk would be the gold standard.
A dirty dish box in the kitchen area, so the cleanup volunteers can (maybe) start early and don’t have to ask around (as much) to see what’s dirty and what’s still in use.
I’d be happy to bring the tables, tubs, and dish-doing consumables to set that up next year, if y’all don’t mind me doing that.
Cranky, these are all really good common-sense ideas that I think we’ll be using for next year. The kitchen staff should have an easier time finding volunteers next time, as well. Thanks for the feedback!
I appreciate the feedback as well. I know this year (IT’S 2016 ALREADY UGH) there will be more tea happening from me at least
the clean up/dish area is going to be much more improved, and with everyone’s participation, it will be easier to keep a clean flow going. Doing it all by myself last year was very uncomfortable, so ya’ll on your own to keep the areas clean and designated!
*uses the Bender “Bending” Rodriguez patented “penny on a string” to deposit his two cents *
I could take or leave hot food for lunches, so I’m rather happy for the coldcut sandwiches and stuff for lunch. Some slightly better-quality options (and a few more options, too!) would be nice even for the attendees, and I’d be happy to pay an extra five or more to get it. (I’m cheap, and poor, and can’t afford more than attendee, usually.)
I was a Scout before I was a fat programmer, so I fully agree with a WAY more streamlined dishwashing process. Maybe little signs with instructions for folks who’ve never done the three-basin wash like us outdoorsy people have? Also having the actual three basins with labels, the proper ingredients (soap, sani, rinse), and a spot for drying would be awesome. Even something like a decently-large piece of chickenwire fencing on top of some stakes (Crazy Joe, I’m talkin’ to you! <3 ) would make a great drying rack for both kitchen and attendee dishes. Now that we have reallyreliable running hot water (We love you, Joe!) it’s much easier to keep the basins hot and fresh, so that shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
Thank you for the reminder about making signs for the wash/rinse/sanitize basins. We’ll also try to mention it to people at least during the first couple meals. (Do call us out on it if we forget!)
I imagine you’re thinking of chickenwire level with the ground, but it still probably wouldn’t hurt to add clothespins and/or binder clips to that chicken wire to help hold stuff in place.
Yeah. A flat panel of chicken wire that is parallel to the ground, held up by posts or similar. That gives a kind of drain pan for large numbers of dishes.
but i can afford stuff.
