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I thought Joseph's thread was a great place to start a little recap of the rally food/meals. I'd like to start by reiterating what Joseph has stated - Karen, Janet, Sandy, Nancy and the rest of the Foods/Shopping/Cooking/Cleanup teams did some great work. Thanks so much.
Where to begin.... Ah yes, Joseph's idea for "
The Progressive Dinner" for early arrivals on Wednesday. When I first heard this suggestion around January, I wondered "how would that work?". As we discussed it a bit more, we could only guess at how many rigs would arrive early and our guess was a really low number, like maybe 6 to 10 rigs. Well, as most of you know, what did we have - over 40 rigs I believe!! This gave new meaning to "Progressive" - but, we made it happen - just on an order of magnitude more than planned. For Nancy and I, we learned from it as well. We learned that you cannot power 3 large coffee pots from one AC circuit in the trailer. But running extension cords to 2 other trailers does work well
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Then Thursday night we had the "
The Potluck Dinner". This one went a bit smoother in my opinion. We probably should have staged the grills a bit earlier and maybe had a few more of them volunteered but all in all, I thought it was great. Maybe we should rent a long, long grill next time?? Boy did we have another terrific selection of foods or what?
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Let's see, Friday. We semi-catered lunch that day. Semi as in Karen planned and ordered six 6-foot long
Subway party subs and some fixin's. Some people even heated up and shared some of their potluck left-overs. Great idea! The ladies bagged up 15 lunches for the service personnel and their managers too. It was the least we could do for those guys and gals working their tails off out there in the heat.
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Oh yes, lest we not forget about
Yoders! Just like last year, we strapped on the feed bags and slid ourselves up to the table at Yoder's Banquets. Also like last year, Henry, Carolyn and family did not disappoint. It was neat to see the reactions by some of our first timers there. Once all the food went down the table and we ate what we took, down came the coffee and they thought pie was next - not!
... down came all the food again! Then pie. We are just too spoiled. We're still pondering how we can do this for 2009. I am sure Yoder's will not be taking their banquets on the road. They may just have to add onto their building for us
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Saturday was no stranger to us getting fed. But here we lucked out. No planning/shopping/cooking/cleaning for us this day.
Flair fed us well mid-morning at their plant tour,
Heartland had Nelson's Catering on-hand to feed us burgers and brats for lunch and
Rob Reid's various operations took care of Nelson's once again to cater a hog roast for us for dinner. And pies again - of course.
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Finally, "
The Farewell Breakfast". Breakfast is one of those meals that can really break the bank. You never know how many people will make it out and if you go nuts on a food plan and make food for twice the amount of people that end up showing up during the last hours of the rally, you'll end up with a whole lot of breakfast to take home and a rally budget in the red. Thankfully, our Foods committee are good guessers and good stewards of our funds. I think we had just enough food. Hope so anyway.
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So that's a wrap-up of the Rally Food-fest. We'd love to hear your feedback on how we can improve going forward. Just to get the discussion rolling, I'll toss out a few questions. Feel free to discuss as you feel led to do so.
1. At Rally provided meals, did you go hungry?
2. Did we run out of food altogether (vs. an item here and there) at any meal?
3. If we sort of look at the Progressive and Potluck dinners together:
A) Does this sort of communal dish sharing meal appeal to you?
B) What about grilling your own meats if desired? Did this work out for you or would you prefer to bring a meat dish to share instead?
4. Are we:
A) tired of Amish/Family style meals yet? And...
B) If no, should we try to come up with an Amish meal that works for the expected crowd in 2009 (like maybe the Essenhaus or Blue Gate restaurants)?
5. Regarding the lunch during the vendor presentations, last year, we provided cold cuts, cheeses and condiments for people to make their own sandwiches. Not sure which was easier on the food team but Subway this year "seemed" more convenient. How did you like it?
6. The Saturday night meal was sponsored and we are rather out of the loop on who caters it and what they make. I did request the hog roast and we got it. What are some of your ideas for this on-site main-event mail in Branson in 2008 and again back home in Indiana in 2009.
7. Does the farewell breakfast work out for most people? I know we ran out of coffee and could have used some bottled water and we can fix both of those. But does the provided breakfast work out well for you on pack up and leave day?
8. Other thoughts on food?
Thank you for your feedback. By hearing from you on what you liked this year, what you didn't much care for and what you'd like to have in the future, we can continue to improve for you.
Jim
