[Sca-cooks] Fw: [Aten_Cooks](long) Feast Policy Draft for Review

[Jim Fox-Davis]

On Tuesday, July 1, 2003, at 06:03 AM, Patricia Collum wrote:

> I guess until you have paid reservations in, a guess at the number 
> attending is still a guess based on the attendence at the past kingdom 
> event (coronation, etc.) even sixmonths to a year out. Five years ago 
> the number of feast reservations at our kingdom/ large baronial events 
> was often 200-250. This last year the feasts that I have seen 
> reservations available for were 100-150. I think too many people have 
> quit eating feasts coupled with too many people getting stuck with 
> large amounts of overbought unsold food. We also have a new senechal, 
> a fairly new kingdom exchequer and current royalty who have taken 
> fiscal responsibility for our kingdom to heart.

I recall last Caid 12th Night, my Baronial Exchequer complaining at me 
weekly that we weren't going to get enough reservations and I was going 
to have to scale back the feast.  Having had previous experience with 
Caid that we are all procrastinators, I kept reassuring her that it'd 
work out.  Mind you, I had a plan in place were we going to have to cut 
back.  As we predicted, though, literally 80% of the reservations came 
in in the last week before deadline (which was about 4 weeks before the 
feast, IIRC).  We then -still- had folks sending in reservations and 
money after deadline hoping to get it (Heck, one fellow, thinking he 
was important, tried to, um, influence my reservations person the week 
before; she was sublimely unimpressed).  As it was, we sat 254 for 
dinner, and had a waiting list of over 50.

Now, mind you, one of the things we had done to stir up interest was 
publish partial menus and do publicity going back 4 months before the 
feast.  Talking it up to get interest helps.  I sent updates to the 
Kingdom mailing list, put a menu in the kingdom newsletter the month 
before, and made sure folks knew I was willing to accommodate allergies 
and sensitivities.  (I set off a couple, anyway -- one fellow didn't 
-know- he was sensitive to ginger).

As for servers -- I don't believe in paying to work.  I comped my 
servers, and would have done so out of my own pocket if necessary.  I 
think the financial cap that has been listed is unreasonable, but then 
I don't know what prices are like in your area.  Here in L.A., I spent 
$9+ a head for the 7-course French extravaganza I did for 12th Night.

Jared
>    
>     The servers they mention are the ones that are comped. This means 
> that if you ask for servers to help out at the feast, they will either 
> have already paid or never intended on eating/staying for feasts 
> anyway until they decide to help out.
>  
>     No one is protesting this so far in Atenveldt. It will basically 
> cap what we can spend without extremely good reason, but I am still 
> looking for the possibility that we still might accidently tie our 
> hands behind our back if our finance commitee will not even look at 
> great ideas that might cost just a little more, and maybe our cooks 
> not being able to eek out the most from our money because we have made 
> the purse strings a little too tight.
>  
> Cecily
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