Meals & Kitchen

Ross (coordinator)
Cat (informal point person for kitchen), Noel, San, Sandy, Liz, Pat, Perley, Judy
email the team

1. The Meals & Kitchen team is a standing team responsible for:

1. Scheduling meals

2. Scheduling people to do the work of meals and meal clean-up, and addressing the needs of cooks and clean-up people.

3. Determining charges for meals and reimbursement rates for cooks

4. Meals accounting, including tracking & billing

5. Setting standards for meals

6. Maintaining our ServSafe certification

7. Ensuring that people who do the work of meals and meal clean-up are trained to follow ServSafe guidelines.

8. Equipping the kitchen (including place settings) through purchases and acceptance of donations of items

9. Organizing the kitchen, including the Kitchen Overflow closet

10. Keeping the kitchen (pantry) stocked

11. Coordinating work in the Kitchen on work weekends

12. Set policy & educate the community about dishes between meals

2. Members are chosen by self-selection and self-identify.  The team email list includes both active team members and other people who do the work of meals.  Kitchen & pantry responsibilities are handled by a subset of the team.

3. Team decisions are made by agreement/lack of dissent, over email or at meetings.  Only active members participate in decision-making.

4. This team separately manages meals accounting and an annual budget from cohousing funds for the Kitchen.

1. Money for and from meals is in an account separate from cohousing funds.  These funds also cover food stocks and other consumables in the kitchen.

2. The annual cohousing budget covers new equipment, replacement equipment (including place settings), knife sharpening, and any fees associated with the ServSafe requirements.  

3. Large appliance replacements are funded through the capital reserves, but will be driven by this team.  Repairs are funded through the maintenance line, and will also be driven by this team.

5. Meals schedules are published regularly. Statistics on meal attendance, how well meal charges line up with meal costs, etc., are sent to the plenary periodically. Reports to the plenary will be issued when new equipment is acquired or ServSafe conditions change.  

6. When notified before scheduling deadlines, the Meals & Kitchen team will help other teams and individuals by scheduling support for food prep and clean-up at community events.

7. The Meals & Kitchen team can make decisions at power level 4 (may decide on its own) about:

   1. Meal scheduling

   2. Meals finances

   3. Kitchen budget spend

   4. Accepting kitchen items as donations

   5. Kitchen & overflow organization.

   6. How the kitchen is used at mealtimes

   7. How the kitchen is used between meals, including dishes, leftovers, and events

   8. Issues pertaining to ServSafe

   It may make decisions at power level 3 (may post a tentative decision) about setting standards for meals.
   (Power Levels: http://wiki.mosaic-commons.org/Facilitation/PowerLevels)

8. Community members can email the team at meals@mosaic-commons.org.
   Donations of kitchen items should be made through communication with this team and not by leaving items in the kitchen.  
   If the kitchen is out of an item that is usually stocked, email pantry@mosaic-commons.org

APPENDIX

We invite anyone who has opinions about how meals are scheduled or billed to be on the Meals email list. It is helpful to have active members who can respond quickly to a needed change and are active on email.

Members are encouraged to participate in meals scheduling times, which happen every two months.  Meals schedules are published via email and a Google calendar.

This team does not meet regularly.   Most discussion and decisions happen on email.

The Meals & Kitchen team can make decisions via email by presenting an idea to the meals email list, waiting at least a week to see if there are any blocks, and responding to discussion by adjusting the proposal.

For changes to our standard practices the team will either have an online discussion or an in-person meeting with the topic announced, followed by a proposal sent to the email list. If there are no blocks in 72 hours after the proposal is sent, the proposal is approved and sent to the community for information.

For items that change significant details of meals we will try to give the community 30 days notice of changes.

Active members of the team are people who come to meals scheduling, come to meals meetings, and/or participate on email. People who do not respond in the set email times are presumed to be inactive for that item, or to be consenting to the decisions.

Any Meals & Kitchen team member may, shortly after a decision is made, request more discussion if they have some reason they could not participate in the decision when it was active.