Meals

Gather’s initial purpose was as a meals administration system. Gather communities tend to have very healthy meals programs. Meals features include:

• A full billing system for sharing meal costs
• Customizable signup types to suit your community’s needs
• Customizable cost formulas
• Beautiful, detailed reporting so you can see how your meals program is working
• Exportable meal calendar
• A pretty, printable summary sheet for cooks
• Customizable meal roles (assistant cook, cleaner, etc.)
• Email reminders for workers, diners, and head cook menu entry
• Automatic integration with facility reservations
• Ability to easily email meal attendees

Coming soon:

• Auto-signup (for communities with a full-participation/opt-out model)
• CSV import & export

Frequently Asked Questions

How does the meals process work?

These are the basic steps:

1. Creation
   Meals are created and staff are assigned. Meals are open for signup at this point.
2. Menu Addition
   The cook decides what to cook and adds the menu. This can happen as part of step 1, or separately.
3. Signup
   Members sign up for the meal. This can technically happen before menu addition but the majority of signups usually take place after the menu has been added.
4. Closing
   The meal is closed by the cook, usually before they go to shop for groceries so they know how much to buy. No signups are allowed after this point.
5. Summary
   The cook views or prints out the meal summary page which lists the number of diners of each type, the expected number of portions needed, and grocery allowance calculations.
6. Mealtime and Late Additions
   Let’s eat! Any late signups permitted by the cook are recorded on the summary sheet or directly in Gather.
7. Finalizing
   The meals biller (or optionally the head cook) finalizes the meal. This includes adjusting the signup counts to reflect latecomers and entering the amount spent on groceries. Charges are added to diner accounts. Care should be taken here as this step can’t be undone.