Hi all,
Flawless! Superb! Broke all records!
THANK YOU to all who worked on it, scouts and adults!
I cannot thank you enough. Everyone did extremely well. Here are some specific thoughts about the various parts of the event:
1.) Everyone showed up when they were supposed to. This indicates that the communications was working well at all levels. Although, a formatting error made the first e-mail with the adult schedule hard to read, e-mailing the schedule worked very well, especially close to the event to fill in the last few vacancies. Thank you all for responding.
Thanks also go to Donna and Mary for making all those phone calls to recruit and remind everyone.
2.) Delivering much of the product a week in advance was excellent.
Thanks Bonnie! That was well done.
3.) Doing the napkin folding ahead of time, removed one of the worst setup bottlenecks. Thanks Boeglins!
4.) We had 17 people to do setup on Saturday. We finished all major setup items. There was only one bottleneck – me. To do this kind of setup well with this many people we will have to have the various jobs written up on paper. I will attempt to do this by next year, so it can go even better. We took less than the three hours we scheduled for this. Good work all – you all took a lot of initiative. Thanks.
5.) We had 9 people for Sunday’s setup. We completed all minor items, and even set up for morning in less than one and a half hours. Thanks all.
6.) The oranges are hard to cut up. We tried to cut differently to make it safer and easier to cut, but unfortunately the visual impact was not well received by the customers and we had complaints that it was harder to eat. Well, we tried. Does anyone know of a slicer that would cut an orange into 8 segments in a single move, just as you can do with apples, but without the coring that is done with apples?
7.) Moving the milk products and the frozen orange juice to the refrigerator on Saturday allowed the orange juice to thaw. This made
preparation much easier. Thanks for the suggestion Bonnie.
8.) Moving the sausages to the kitchen at 8:00 pm on Sunday and leaving them out of the refrigerator until 2:30 am, allowed them to half thaw.
This made cooking them a lot easier and their temperature was still below that of a refrigerator – the health department would not have complained. Thanks to Gerry Abegg for the original suggestion and to Bonnie Osborn for helping to implement it.
9.) Last year’s innovation of a VIP setup table was expanded to twice its size and made all the difference in the world. We had a food thermometer with a long neck that has not been used in years. It was perfect to measure the temperature of the pancakes on the table.
This allowed us to know when they had to be returned for reheating, so they would stay piping hot for the VIPs. Thanks Mary and all who helped move food to that table and to our guests.
10.) The drinks table was somewhat problematic as always, although things seemed to go more smoothly this year. I am not sure what happened, other than our folks really did a good job with it. We will purchase a few more urns for coffee, and hot chocolate. This would allow us to make hot chocolate earlier and to stock up on coffee just before the major rush. Thanks to Peggy McHugh, Ginny Caples, Wendy Manz, Louise Manz and Franco Wong.
11.) On the other hand there were many improvements there. Beth Robinson suggested (and then made) signs for each of the stations. This greatly reduced crowding around the table as everyone knew what was where. Thanks Beth!
12.) Several people were inventive in labeling the urns. Thanks to all of you.
13.) The area around the table was much cleaner than in past years.
The trays to catch the drips worked very well and our scouts kept up with all such issues. Thanks to all involved.
14.) The kitchen and the serving staff performed flawlessly. Amazingly enough we will need to make more pancakes ahead of the rush next year.
Thanks to all.
15.) The service project that we did for the Rolfsons to help compensate for all they do for us on the Deep Freeze trips was a success. We sold all 47 bottles of maple syrup and raised $282 for them and made $47 for the troop. If we implement some of the suggestion for how to make it better, we can try for 50% more bottles next year. If the weather cooperates, the Rolfsons will ship that many more to us.
Thanks Thomas and all the others who manned the table.
16.) We had a record crowd! We ran out of sausages, pancake mix, orange slices, milk and forks. We then proceeded to run Stop and Shop out of plastic forks. Thanks Miljana for staying well beyond your shift and for the two trips to the store! Next year, I will up the numbers of what we will purchase. Even with running short we made $500 more profit this year than last. Good work all!
17.) If anyone knows who to thank for the donation of two gallons of maple syrup and a 10 lb bag of Krusteaz mix, please, let me know. We used the mix even though we thought it did not belong to us, then we discovered that it was donated to us.
18.) The coffee cart was well manned. The extra coffee urns will help that function next year. Thanks for the good suggestion about a sugar dispenser Dave. We will implement that next year.
19.) The tent and the camp area that was set up drew a lot of positive comments and it looked real good. Thanks to the scouts who set it up!
20.) We had one minor emergency – a boy burned his finger with hot chocolate. Our SPL remembered his first aid training and handled the problem well. Good job Joey!
21.) All scouts performed very well. The organization was superb, the attitude was excellent. Thanks Joey for a superb job of being the SPL.
And thanks to all scouts. You made it easier for all of us.
–Charles Hatvany