Valley of Raleigh Spring 2022 Reunion Lunches After Action Report

In hopes of building our store of experience for future Reunion lunches here are a few observations from the Valley of Raleigh Spring Reunion:

• Having the dining room serve double duty as the lecture hall doesn't work worth a damn. Since all our kitchen gear is located in a closet in the middle of the room and our serving line is in the dining room, we can't avoid being a constant interruption and distraction for the class and lecturers. Luckily, we served cold sandwiches Friday and pizza from a restaurant on Saturday so they weren't subjected to cooking smells during the morning sessions! With most of the degrees communicated in the classroom, this meant the dining room was occupied almost continually. I hope that Valley leadership will give serious consideration to holding future reunions in some other location with a better mix of stage, classroom and dining facilities.

• Don Butto and I guessed at the number of diners to expect at each meal - we decided on 45. It was hard to get an actual headcount with people milling around, but I think we had between 37 and 40 people eating lunch each day.

• Friday was ‘build your own sandwich’ day. Due to size of packages, etc. I ended up buying enough food to make 50 sandwiches. This was overkill for the number of diners we had, but due to buying large packages of ingredients at Sam’s Club for cost control I couldn’t fine-tune the number very closely. I purchased ingredients with a target of 3 ounces of meat, 2 slices of cheese and a large roll for each sandwich. The meat and cheese were packaged up into baggies with 1.5 oz of meat in each baggie so diners could mix & match. Cheese was packaged up with 2 slices per baggie. Packaging the meat & cheese in baggies takes a couple hours but makes it much easier to do portion control.

  • Bread – a mix of hoagie rolls, buns, etc. In order to have them fresh I had to wait until the day before the meal to purchase them and had to take whatever mix I could make up from the rolls/buns/etc. available in the grocery store (Harris-Teeter) where I went shopping.

  • Meat – I bought large packages of deli turkey, ham, roast beef, chicken and pastrami at Sam's Club. That was supplemented with a couple smaller packages of roast beef from Harris Teeter to end up with 150 oz (appx 9.4 lbs) of deli meat.

  • Cheese – Again, large packages of sliced Swiss and sliced mild cheddar from Sam’s Club, supplemented by smaller packages of gouda and pepper jack to add up to 100 slices of cheese total.

  • Lettuce – I chopped up 2 heads of romaine lettuce, had some left over at the end

  • Tomatoes – I sliced & halved 6 medium sized tomatoes. Almost all used up, a couple slices left.

  • Pickles – I bought a small jar of Kosher Dill pickles – ran out fairly early on, next time buy a larger jar or several small jars of different types of pickles.

  • Condiments – I put out the individual packets of mustard and mayonnaise left over from earlier events.

  • Drinks – I bought a mixture of soft drinks, cartons of 12 each of Sprite (both diet and regular), Coke (diet & regular), Dr. Pepper (diet & regular) and Dr. Pepper with Cream Soda (diet & regular) for a total of 96 cans (half for Friday, half for Saturday). I added some cans of Sprite and flavored carbonated water I had left over from a previous event.

  • Cookies – I bought 4 packages of 24 each mixed cookies from Costco. This gave each person 1 large cookie with lunch for Friday and another for Saturday. Almost 1/4th of the cookies left over at the end of the day on Saturday.

  • Chips – I bought a ‘better box’ of individual Sun Chips (30 count) at Sam’s Club, supplemented it with potato chips left over from previous events. Probably only half to two thirds of the chips were used, even though I set the chips out again on Saturday with the pizza.

• Twelve pizzas were about right for our 37-40 people. We had enough random slices left over to make up 1 large pizza. For the salad I served with the pizza, I used 4 heads of Romaine lettuce, 1 package of spinach leaves, 1 package of shredded carrot, 1 bell pepper and 1 small package of blueberries. The spinach and lettuce were mixed together, all the other ingredients were put on the serving line in separate containers so people could build their own salads.  The quantity was about right - we had salad left over but given the quantization forced by buying ingredients in packages, we couldn't have reduced it. Bell pepper was the only ingredient we ran out of. I purchased the pizzas from a Dominos about a mile away on Falls River Ave, the next shopping center down the road on Durant. They had the pizzas ready on time, no complaints. I ordered 1 each of the following large hand-tossed crust pizzas:

  • ham & mushroom

  • ham & onion

  • beef, mushroom

  • cheese

  • pepperoni

  • pepperoni & onion

  • pepperoni & mushroom

  • sausage

  • sausage & onion

  • sausage & mushroom

  • chicken, spinach, diced tomatoes

  • vegetarian

• I picked the pizzas up at 11:00 for lunch scheduled for 11:30. I had to depend on KSA to set up the serving line while I was picking up the pizza - they did a great job. Picking it up at 11:15 would have had the pizza warmer, but would have run a greater risk of lunch being late due to surprises. The pizzas were not labeled, leaving the diners to guess what toppings were on each pizza. The pizzas cost about $150 with tax.

• The materials for the sandwiches, the drinks, salad fixins, chips and cookies for both days cost about $250. Not included in this amount are the plates, napkins, condiments, salad dressing, plasticware, etc. that we had left over from previous events. Purchasing those would easily have added $100 to the amount spent, if not more. These items will eventually be used up and have to be replaced, so don’t assume future reunion meals will be as cheap as this one.

• The spare tables we set up to serve from were stained and scratched. We need to buy a stack of the disposable plastic table covers to use when serving from them.

• Setting up the spare tables blocked access between the kitchen and dining room – this had the advantage of keeping the usual crowd from gathering in the kitchen and getting in the way. It was necessary to keep one kitchen helper in the dining room, though, to replenish stuff on the tables, clean up spills, etc.

• KSA help was imperative, especially with the pizza. As the KSA guys are recruited for roles in degrees and as we start conferring more than the minimum 4 degrees it may become harder to muster sufficient KSA help in the kitchen.

• I have served sandwiches 3 times in a row now, once for York Rite degrees and twice for Scottish Rite Reunions. We need to think of other options for the future. Things we can prepackage and not have to cook during the event will work better than foods that would require cooking/heating in the kitchen. Calvin has suggested hotdogs & hamburgers prepared on his grill and brought in to serve. A taco bar or baked potato bar would be another option, if we could bake the potatoes & heat the taco meat elsewhere and bring them to the kitchen in coolers.

• Reunions produce a lot of trash. We need to make sure trash disposal is covered for each day of the reunion.

• Calvin fielded inquiries about the cook crew serving breakfast for the crew, as Johnny Davis used to do. There are a number of circumstances mitigating against this:

  • No budget was allocated for cooking breakfast.

  • Most of the cook crew lives far away from J.J. Crowder. Getting us old geezers there at 6 am to make breakfast would be a strain.

  • At the old temple we could serve breakfast for just the cast/crew in the dining room without the class even being aware that it was being served. With the class sitting in the dining room, we’d have to serve them too, turning this into a complete meal for 40ish people.

  • The kitchen is small, making cooking & serving breakfast while trying to set up for lunch difficult.

  • The dining room/classroom would smell like cooking breakfast all morning.

• The Valley budgeted money to cover lunch for class, cast & crew for both meals. Amran Shrine picked up the bill for Friday. This works much better than trying to collect money for lunch from cast & crew but not class members.