![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaHello! If you are a person with complicated dietary requirements, maybe you can give me some advice.
My dance team organises an event once a year (it's this Sunday, in Oxford, if you want to come along). It takes the form of a pub crawl, with dancing. At the final pub, people settle down for a chat and so on, and we provide home-made cake. We make sure that there is at least some gluten-free and some dairy-free cake, for people who eat that sort of thing.
However, for the past few years the landlord of the pub has started providing food as well. Not only does he let us use the function room for no cost he provides, at his own expense, food of the bucket-o'-stew variety. I think providing food (one meat option, one veggie, plus rice) for around a hundred people is jolly decent of him.
However, last year I got quite a mouthful from one of the attendees because their dietary requirements were not met by either of the options. If we were providing formal catering and charging people, I would expect to have asked in advance what people's requirements were, and tried to ensure they were all met. However, when the catering is being done entirely as a good-will gesture, I don't feel we can really present the landlord with a list of complicated requirements (last year I think the veggie option was also GF and DF, which I'd thought was pretty good already).
So... the details for the event say that the landlord will be providing food. I'd like to add something along the lines of this being a couple of basic options, provided by him for free, and that it might not be suitable for everyone. I have no idea how to phrase this, and don't want to sound like I'm dismissing people with detailed food constraints - I'd just like everyone to feel that they've been properly informed about what they can expect.
Alternatively, if you think I'm being unreasonable (from my privileged perspective of someone who can pretty much bite into anything without worrying) then please say so.
If it's relevant, the pub does also serve a regular pub menu (pub classics, sarnies, jacket spuds etc), and people are welcome to order their own food.
My dance team organises an event once a year (it's this Sunday, in Oxford, if you want to come along). It takes the form of a pub crawl, with dancing. At the final pub, people settle down for a chat and so on, and we provide home-made cake. We make sure that there is at least some gluten-free and some dairy-free cake, for people who eat that sort of thing.
However, for the past few years the landlord of the pub has started providing food as well. Not only does he let us use the function room for no cost he provides, at his own expense, food of the bucket-o'-stew variety. I think providing food (one meat option, one veggie, plus rice) for around a hundred people is jolly decent of him.
However, last year I got quite a mouthful from one of the attendees because their dietary requirements were not met by either of the options. If we were providing formal catering and charging people, I would expect to have asked in advance what people's requirements were, and tried to ensure they were all met. However, when the catering is being done entirely as a good-will gesture, I don't feel we can really present the landlord with a list of complicated requirements (last year I think the veggie option was also GF and DF, which I'd thought was pretty good already).
So... the details for the event say that the landlord will be providing food. I'd like to add something along the lines of this being a couple of basic options, provided by him for free, and that it might not be suitable for everyone. I have no idea how to phrase this, and don't want to sound like I'm dismissing people with detailed food constraints - I'd just like everyone to feel that they've been properly informed about what they can expect.
Alternatively, if you think I'm being unreasonable (from my privileged perspective of someone who can pretty much bite into anything without worrying) then please say so.
If it's relevant, the pub does also serve a regular pub menu (pub classics, sarnies, jacket spuds etc), and people are welcome to order their own food.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2015-11-30 01:47 pm (UTC)The food is very informal - large stay-warm urns of stew are parked on a table with plastic bowls/cutlery and people help themselves to what they want, so ladling out a taster is certainly an option. Also, the attendees are mostly people who know each other pretty well, so I've certainly seen people dipping spoons in each other's bowls to try in the past (plus generally fetching and carrying for each other depending on who's trapped in a corner/holding a baby/whatever).