SC - MoC???

[Charles McCN]

On Wed, 19 Nov 1997 07:24:49 -0700 (MST) Mary Morman
<memorman at oldcolo.com> writes:

>I do not understand how a cook can cook a feast without knowing how 
>many
>people to cook for. 

In our area, you usually have an idea of how many to expect. For example,
we do an annual Michaelmas feast. We can seat 96 (12 tables of 8) so we
usually cook for 100 cause it's easier and that gives us enough to feed
an extra musician or so that shows up. Plus kids under the age of 6 who
are always free and may or may not sit at a table. We have never filled
all 96 reservations. Seats, yes. With freebies. Usually we have 90-93
paid, about half of them ahead of time. The extra people just isn't worth
worrying about. We always make enough. Or we have leftovers! Sometimes.

 I just can't see it.  And my parsimonious (not to 
>say
>suspicious...) soul cannot deal with the idea that the cook is given 
>$xxx
>to 'cook the feast' and expected to seat all comers.

We usually set a maximum number. Usually what the hall can hold. Most of
our affordable halls are not very large. We can tell from past
experience, early reservations and word of mouth if we can expect to fill
the hall or not. We usually don't use a hall a lot bigger than necessary
to seat the number we want for the feast, because bigger halls are more
expensive. So any number can come to the tourney, or whatever the day's
entertainment might be, but they know coming in that if they don't have
reservations, they might not get a seat at dinner. We have waiting lists
for anyone who wants a seat and doesn't have one. If someone cancels or
changes their mind we start at the top of the waiting list until they
fill up. Attendees take their chances about getting on board if they
don't send reservations in early, but the cooks usually cook the same
amount of food regardless and the autocrat has to deal with who gets to
eat it. 

Of course, I live in the most populous part of the Known World - outside
of Philadelphia - New York, Baltimore, Washington, DC all within about 1
1/2 hours. Filling reservations is not usually a problem around here!

As far as refunds - we usually give them. The last feast I cooked, I
served three courses, a total of 10 dishes, three containing meat, for a
cost of $2.34 per person (Just call me shop-a-holic extraodinaire! I'm
teaching a class at EKU in January on how I do that.) so refunds are not
that big a deal. We make them pay site fee if they cancel at the last
minute, cause that's where our big costs usually lie. I don't think we've
ever had to refund more than one or two reservations.

Julleran 


>Late and running,
>Elaina
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