Re: [72attendees] Dietary restrictions

["Mary Barnes" <[e-mail]>]

Dale, 

Do you have food allergies or dietary restrictions?  I've been dealing
with them for 5+ years, as well has having a vegetarian child and have A
LOT of experience in dealing with these issues. I know A LOT about
nutrition. I've attended conferences in the past that could cater to the
majority of us with these issues. I have many, many food restrictions.
The hotel here has been accomodating when I've been able to reach staff
to deal with this. These folks are professionals and when they're
informed, they know exactly how to meet needs.

I have volunteered to help deal with the situation for future meetings
and think it's possible to have a very workable solution.
It should not difficult to query the information during registration.
I've done it for other conferences - I do it when I send my kids to camp
-  and I'd be happy to sort through it the information and work with AMS
and the venue to at least try to accommodate us.   AFAIK, this has never
been attempted before. 

In terms of cost, if I can pay the same price for a YMCA/Campfire, etc.
camp for my kids to have their dietary restrictions accomodated, then I
think major hotels/conference venues for which we pay a premium for
service can accommodate us. Indeed, the chefs at such would likely be
insulted to hear that people don't believe they can do their jobs -this
is a part of their education/training. When I have been able to order
food at this venue, it's been handled exceptionally well.

Finally, I will add that the reason this problem has been such a HUGE
issue at this venue is due to the poor accessiblity to food markets. In
Paris, we just all shopped in the nice market in the venue. In
Philadelphia, there was Residence Inn next door and two Whole Foods
within walking distance - as a result I only had to eat at restaurants
twice and could easily bring my lunch from the hotel in my lunch cooler
if needed for lunch meetings or just pop back over to the hotel.  

Regards,
Mary


-----Original Message-----
From: [e-mail] [mailto:[e-mail]]
On Behalf Of Dale Worley
Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2008 6:02 AM
To: [e-mail]
Subject: 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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