[Sca-cooks] Suggestions Needed

[The Sheltons]

Greetings everyone.

I am soliciting input from people who have dealt with site owners preparing
SCA meals and with cooking for wars.

Kingdom Crusades is a war between Atlantia and the East that takes place in
mid-October. The war itself has occured for at least a decade and, like
Pennsic,  has settled into a de facto site with rotating responsibility for
being in charge. Until now, there has never been a feast at the event, but
this year's autocrat wants to have one. He has talked to the site owner, who
is willing to consider it, provided that they do all the food buying,
cooking, etc. So Nikulai has asked me to talk with their cooking person
about period foods, what we would and wouldn't want to see if they prepared
a meal for us, etc.

I am supposed to contact this guy next week. At this point, the only thing I
know is that they can supposedly feed 400 people. The owner obviously
expects to turn a profit on this, but wouldn't say how much of a profit
margin he expected to make. I've never been to the site but I'm told it has
concessions like the Coopers, so a feast could cause a decrease in
concession sales for them which they would try to cover.  At this point, my
questions are:

1)  Do other inter-kingdom wars have feasts and are they well supported?  I
assume some potential mitigating factors are what percent of the
participants are daytrippers and how rural the site is {i.e. if the nearest
McDonalds is 20 miles away you're more likely to stay on site and eat the
feast if available}?

2)  If there is a feast, do you require advanced registration/payment or is
it just sign up on-site if you want it?

3) What dishes have people suggested when dealing with non-SCA cooks?
Without knowing their capabilities, I'm thinking 2 courses with a couple of
meats (something like Cormarye and some kind of chicken), cheese as a 3rd
protein, some type of tourte/tart, a starch like rice, a couple of
vegetables, some additional items for vegetarians, the inevitable bread and
butter, and some type of simple dessert(s).  Given the date, a nice hot soup
would probably go over well but I'm always a little leery about the
logistics of serving soup to the masses.

4) What would be a reasonable target price?  In Atlantia, the going price
for a meal like the above could be anywhere from $6-10 {I'm getting $7 for
the feast I'm cooking in June}.  SCA cooks generally shop around to get good
deals, but we also have the benefit of house-elf labor {i.e. kitchen grunts
who work for free}.  The site owner is in a better position as far as buying
in bulk, but he's also going to have to pay his kitchen staff {and
potentially some serving staff}.  I have no idea what labor would be as a
percentage of his costs and how much of an impact that is going to have on
the prospective price for feast.  If we charge $10/head and the actual food
costs $7, that's an the extra $3/head.  If we feed 400 people that's $1,200
but if we only get 200 that's $600. Is that going to be enough to cover the
labor costs and still return a sufficient profit for the owner?   On the
other hand, if he manages to get the food for $5, that's $2,000 @ 400
people.  The key is going to be providing enough food that people don't feel
gipped while making enough money for the owner to make it worth his while to
even provide a feast.

5) What is the breaking point; i.e at what price do people decide they don't
want to pay for feast {even though we know it's a better bargain than
they'll get anywhere else}?  I can see Atlantians paying $10 for a feast but
above that it gets a little dicey.  We just had a $12 feast at Coronation
but it was 4 courses with a different cook in charge of each course, and
Robear has a history of returning large profit margins on feasts.  How do
people in the East feel about feasts and fees?  The last thing we want is to
have a feast at Crusades with 350 Atlantians and only 50 Easterners because
of differing expectations.

Any advice/suggestions anyone can provide would be appreciated. I have to go
out of town tonight but will be back Thursday night if anyone needs
additional input from my end.  As always, thanks for your assistance.

John le Burguillun