SC - The High Cost of Feasts/Events

[LrdRas at aol.com]

In a message dated 10/12/98 11:50:05 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
LillianJ at bethlehem.org.au writes:

<< I would suggest to any cook in this situation to start dividing your $5 per
 head into $1.50 per head for tables, etc and $3.50 for food. Let the Site
 Stewards know and you may be suprised. People may be expecting $5 per person
 food, if they know they are only getting $3.50,  >>

I have never known any shire in my immediate area to have to pay for seperate
tables. This is a new one to me.

Somehow you seem to have gotten two posts confused together. I charge 5 bucks
a head and spend 5 bucks a head on food. I do not use feast money for non-food
items. The person that does this is a different person than I. Our contracts
are always with sites that provide full service. That is toilet tissue, water,
bathrooms, showers, sometimes cabins. Of course our events, except for the
fall schola are weekend events. Day tripping is not popular in my neck of the
woods. :-) Paper towels and other odds and ends are always taken from the
shire's general funds. With a nice cushion of funds in a CD account as well as
a large operating budget from other activities throughout the year, it is not
a problem for us to keep the site fees at cost. That cost is still too high in
many cases. 

Also if rhe diner is paying 5 dollars for food at a feast, he/she would
typically pay the eqivalent of 50 to 100 dollars or more for second class food
in the same amounts at a mundane place. 

In other words, the 3.50 that you mentioned might get you a half an ouer
d'oeuvre at a fine restaurant or maybe if your real lucky a bowl of soup. It
would not get you a typical full meal at McD's.

I still maintain that feasts costs are not the cause of high event fees. They
are almost always attributable to increased site fees or a desire on the part
of the shire to make money off of the event when auctions, contests and
raffles of donated goods would accomplish the same purpose without increasing
the event fee.

Ras. 
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