Our Grandparent luncheon is successful because we have a very dedicated cafetaria staff. We start advertising this about two months in advance , and it is already on the year calendar. We try to have it on the last Wednesday of April. We work with the district food service department to come up with a menu that is very little work and fast to get people thru line. Everything is already in bags or little containers prior to this day(chips, cookies, salad, carrots, raisins, etc.) All our staff has to do is cook hotdogs and wrap them. We also get a good quote from the district on this, we pay 2.50 per adult lunch.
We do this on a RSVP method, we send out the flyer about a month before, give two weeks for replys. Of course we do get alot of later responses that we accept as long as it doesn't get out of control. We allow each student tp bring up to four adult guests, we always get around 75 who bring their own lunch. It is CONSTANT communication with our staff as far as changing numbers. We come up with guests list by grade level, they check in at the front desk and this year they all received a corsage.
IF someone comes and hasn't rsvp we dont turn them away. The staff always plans about 40-50 extra.
We do have to change lunch times around because we find that K and 1st get the biggest amount of people, so we insert a grade that get lower numbers to give the staff a "break" between large numbers. K also gets the most time to eat -45 minutes, when time is up we thank people for coming and start the next load.
Keys to this being a hit :Communication, supporting your staff and always say THANK YOU! Without those ladies we could not do this!
It has become a huge hit and it is just amazing to see how happy all generations are...it is well worth it. hope this helps!
Sounds great. Please share more info. How'd you do it? Any key/unusual steps? Timeline?
Thanks in advance for sharing.
Tim
PS -- edited the above posts because we're really trying to encourage sharing right here on the forums. Many, many forum users are lurkers (probably 40X-50x the number of posters), and we also have folks who read old threads sometimes years later. This whole forum "thing" is much more effective when the ideas are shared (and therefore archived) right here on the boards. Appreciate your understanding.
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Hi everyone, just had to share with you about the great day we just had at our school. we held our 4th annual grandparent/special adult friend luncheon today! What a great event for all that are involved! We had 449 guests and of those 373 got lunch compliments of our group! Watching the generations together is such a great thing and has come to be a tradition at our school of 460 kids, for the kids who didnt have a guest staff members and other guests step up to spend time with them. if you have the resources and a GREAT lunch staff it is something to truly look at. next up...staff appreciation week!
