[Sca-cooks] Re: Cost of feast

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Barbara Benson:
>The only thing
>your feast dollar goes to is the actual food being prepared for your
>consumption. We expect more for our dollar and rightfully so.

Why? Especially from a majority of non-professionals? Apart from the
aspects of overhead cost versus the costs of mise en place for a
large a la carte menu, which more cancel each other out to some
extent rather than complicate each other, the bottom line is that the
money is being spent on food. Mostly non-professionals without the
storage facilities or the majority of their worktime to devote to the
task of feeding you, and they should be _more_ efficient and
proficient than professionals?

>  I have been to
>any number of feasts that (in this false analogy) would have easily cost
>over $100 at a restaurant that served food of that quality. So being charged
>$8 for a feast that I would not have paid $8 for at the local diner - well
>some people may feel ripped off.

I honestly don't follow this. After what looks like an assertion that
a good SCA feast is a bargain, if a comparable meal in a restaurant
would easily be priced $100 (or did you actually mean cost?), you're
concerned about an $8 feast being overpriced? Is it simply the
question of when you're on the food-budget level where your $8
represents a serious food investment, you can't afford not to be fed
your money's worth? I suppose that's true, but that doesn't equate
with some idea that people at SCA feasts should expect more for their
money. If they do get more, that's great, but there's no real reason
to expect it, since the advantages of managing a kitchen in the short
term versus long term (i.e. lower overhead, fewer worries) are
cancelled out by the disadvantages (higher costs, unskilled labor,
etc.).

Adamantius
--
"No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes
deserves to be called a scholar."
	-DONALD FOSTER