[Sca-cooks] Site fee for cooks

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Muirenn ingen Ragnaill <jmcrimmins at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I have been cooking at SCA events for several years and have never been charged a 
> site fee for the events I am head cook at. I recently cooked for an event and was 
> asked to pay a site fee the day of the event. How is it handled for others in SCA?
>
> The autocrats were made aware by a past autocrat and cook that they should of been 
> upfront when asking me to do the event months ago and not waiting until the day of.

I have found that it varies depending on what branch is sponsoring an event here in the West Kingdom.

The first feast i head cooked, i and kitchen crew were comped, along with sitting royalty and, IIRC, their retinue. The next year we - i, the head cook, and my crew - were not comped. This was because someone important said that people were coming in as crew, working in the kitchen a very brief time, then playing the rest of the event (the event involved a "boar hunt" featuring "hunters", "dogs", and "boars"), then eating the feast. Since i was focused on cooking i didn't notice that, but did not dispute it.

For some different events i have head cooked, only the sitting royalty were comped and not their retinue. I can't remember if i and my crew had to pay, but i think we paid...

We don't have kingdom-level feasts here, since nearly all our kingdom-level events are camping. Twelfth Night is an exception, being in a hotel, and we arrange for BYO food for lunch - people eat in restaurants for dinner. And our Collegium Occidentalis is also an exception, having a potluck lunch, or people go off-site to eat. We used to have feasts at our Collegia, but that was discontinued because it was too expensive, what with our typical low attendance.

Urtatim al-Qurtubiyya