Re: [72attendees] Dietary restrictions

On Thu, 2008-07-31 at 05:12 -0500, Mary Barnes wrote:
> Dealing with our dietary restrictions isn't at all difficult if things
> are properly planned in advance.  All of us that deal with this know
> this, but getting the info individually ahead of a meeting can be
> difficult. [...]

> Any decent chef (available at virtually any venue where we would hold a
> meeting) is trained in dealing with all of this. The costs are really
> minimal, as in most cases it involves leaving out things, using basic
> ingredients and fresh foods that don't require a lot of prep.

Everything I've heard about food service is that costs are dominated by
labor, not food per se.  And of course, the more skilled the labor, the
more expensive it will be.  At least, that holds in software
engineering, but I see no reason why food service would be different.

Now maybe it *is* of minimal added cost to the venue to make these
provisions.  Perhaps we should provide the venue a list of types and
numbers of specialized food and ask them what the additional price would
be?  That could provide solid data.  (OTOH, that would require prior
notification of the numbers of each dietary restriction -- can we get
solid enough commitments?)

It sounds like proper prior information might be a way to solve this at
minimal cost.  But again, gathering that information is labor-intensive,
must be done on-site, and requires someone who is sufficiently
competent, so that isn't going to be free, either.  What is a good
method of accomplishing that?

Now let me be clear, I'm not trying to argue for or against any
particular solution.  I just want people to understand this isn't an
easy problem, and that we need to expend some care and effort to
construct a good solution, with attention paid to all the constraints.
If we spend our efforts just complaining that it *should be easy*, we
won't construct a workable solution, and the problem will keep
recurring.  The only real evidence we have is that we haven't solved the
problem yet, which is pretty good evidence that there is no known
solution which works in practice.

Dale

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