Discussion #2 - Serving...

[donnad.livejournal.com]

Last year, we only put out a handful of flavors at a time. IMO this was a bad idea.

I'm an observer, I watch people, and with fewer tubs of ice cream on the table, I noticed that people were more likely to take two scoops of a single flavor rather than a small scoop of a couple of flavors.
If the ice cream was in one of the yogurt tubs having one person take half the tub was resulting in people (who weren't pushy enough to get in and get some,) not getting any or getting the melted dredges after it was pretty much gone.

The more tubs of ice cream we put out on the tables at once the more likely everyone will get some of the flavors they want to try as people will take smaller servings of multiple flavors so they can,
1. still have a full bowl and 2. get a taste of lots of flavors.

I think the thought in a few people's heads was, "Well, my favorite flavors aren't out, but I like this one flavor that is out so I'll just have a full bowl of this one flavor." Some people like to have full bowls, and if we don't have enough flavors out, they will fill them with what we do put out.

This also begs the question of serving utensils, do we need smaller scoops? tablespoon size, rather than ice cream scoop size?

I personally am in favor of putting out some of the smaller servings mid day/afternoon on Saturday, then putting out whatever is sufficiently frozen, all of it, on Saturday night and again, whatever is left on Sunday.

When we have 80 flavors, and two yogurt size tubs of many of them, putting out 30 or 40 yogurt size tubs for 120 people just doesn't make sense. Also, I got none of the flavors I wanted to really try on Saturday night last year. I had something like a single scoop of one of my own flavors, the rest of the ones I would even consider trying were gone before I got to them. A single yogurt tub is not a lot of ice cream when people take large scoops.

Yeah, this got talked about a bit last year, right after BC. But it's worth bringing it up again, and seeing if we can come up with some ideas so people don't end up feeling gyped.

Hope I'm not out of line in bringing these things up here in this community, but I think we do need to think about how things are done and strive to make them easier and more efficient in an effort to make more people happy.

Comments

[ceo]

I think the problem can be at least ameliorated by a combination of more flavors out at once, smaller scoops and some degree of customer education: as in, "please don't take huge amounts of any one flavor!".

Of course, the other part of the problem is overcrowding at the tables. Having someone dole out ice cream strikes me as not really workable: it's inefficient and it's basically treating people like first-graders. It might work, however, to introduce the concept of lining up at each table, like we do for meals. A line on each side of each table would move pretty fast and avoid the pushing and shoving endemic to the current system.

I wonder if there's a better way to announce what flavors are at each table. Calling out the flavors as they're brought out strikes me as kind of useless, as it exceeds most people's short-term memory quite quickly.

And bring on the weird flavors. I love that people are inspired to make prosciutto gorgonzola basalmic fig, even if I had to throw my bowl away after sampling it (in fairness, I'd forgotten that gorgonzola is a cheese I can't stand).

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

Perhaps we should have a white board at each table with the flavors to be found there pre-written on the board for convenience. Wouldn't take much to make that happen.

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Practical issues to consider: Light to read by, and what happens when everything changes due to rain?

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

For rain I don't have any instant answers. For the light problem, I will point out that its bright enough at all the locations in question to read a whiteboard, written in large letters with neat handwriting. Or, we can hang a battery operated flashlight lantern above each station to make things visible. (Yes, BTW I am willing to pony up money out of pocket to make whiteboards and battery lanterns happen.) For rain, I'd say we could quickly erase the boards and write the flavors on the boards as they are delivered to each station. All it would take would be someone with readable handwriting waiting to write things down as they are assigned. Besides, in theory, if we segregate the flavors by allergens etc and color code the locations with the same lables as on the ice cream containers, we should still be able to keep the ice cream divided into the same groups when its put out indoors. We'd just have to flag the designated location for each group, like having stations outdoors. If that happened, the lists would stay the same and the boards wouldn't need to be erased. As I said, just thinking off the top of my hat here.