SC - paid reservations?

[Christi Redeker]

Stefan was talking about a feast that he did and he said:

>>I was concerned about attendance up until the day of the event.<<

To me this is the reason for the pre-paid reservations.  This allows that one extra thing not to be another point of stress.  I worry enough about my feasts that I have probably 6 lists just concerning the dinner.  Mistress Elaina says this will ebb in time, but I am pretty anal retentive about planning, so... one could always hope!  The last thing I want to do is think about what if we don't have enough people to show up.  I still worry about it living in Colorado (snow, ice, blizzards) but those are things we have no control over.

Miss Manners I am not... but I think that if someone invites me to their house for a meal, the least I can do is let them know that I am coming.  And, I would let them know in a reasonable amount of time that they could plan on food and such for me.

Murkial



- -----Original Message-----
From:	Mark Harris [SMTP:rsve60 at email.sps.mot.com]
Sent:	Wednesday, November 19, 1997 12:02 PM
To:	SCA-Cooks maillist
Subject:	SC - paid reservations?

Aoife responded to my comments and questions about feast reservations.

I wasn't as clear as I guess I should have been. So here are some 
clarifying comments:

>>>>>>>>>>>>
Wow! You mean that even your most famous cooks have to cook a feast A) not
knowing how many will eat it, 
>>>>>>>>>>>
Yep. You get a rough estimate from the event steward, the baron or a
combination and go from there. If it is a repeating event such as the
Candlemas I autocrated six years ago, you can sometimes use past history
as a guide.

>>>>>>>>
B)Without the group having any money to cover
the cost of the food at the time of purchase, and 
>>>>>>>>

In this case, I guess I am lucky. Our barony has around $4000 or more in
the bank. So the money is there to front money for such an event. The
year I did it, the budget was around $2000. $1000 for the hall and deposit
and most of the rest for feast. We had 360 or so on site and 325 ate the
feast.

Even though this was an inside event, snow or ,more common for this area,
ice can have a major effect on attendance. Even just the rumor of such
can bring the attendance down, even when it doesn't actually ice up.

I was concerned about attendance up until the day of the event. The day
of the event, I was busy trying to figure out how to get everyone in the
hall. Even going so far as considering bringing the round, metal patio
tables in from the patio. We're using the same site this year for the
event but now they've substituted wooden round tables for the rectangular
wooden ones I used. Thankfully, I'm not the autocrat this time.

While you would not lose all the money if an ice storm dropped attendance,
it would be a major hit. Personally, I think the paid reservations are
a good idea. If weather then causes problems, the monetary damage is
spread across many people and not just one group's treasury.

We also have a tendancy to cook more than enough food, "just in case".
With paid reservations you could do tighter meal planning. Although,
now that there have been some Ansteorran events with feasts with specific
cut-off counts, reservations, even unpaid ones, may increase. For the
Candlemas event mentioned above, I think I got only 80 to 120 reservations.

So far, I feel like a grinch or zen archery target every time I try to
bring it up in this kingdom. It is nice to see that other kingdoms see
things differently and I will be creating a file of these comments (pro
and con) for future arguments on this.

>Aoife--boggling at the thought of "No Advance Paid Reservations".

Stefan li Rous
RSVE60 at email.sps.mot.com
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