A cooking club?! What?! Seems too good to be true, right?
Well that’s at least what I thought when I read a friend’s Facebook status about getting ready for her cooking club that evening. Her words had me hooked immediately. I just HAD to learn more.
So I did my research… between online, emails and some phone chats with friends (thanks Carlene and Christine!) I knew I had to look into starting a cooking club.
Now I’m certainly not a professional – but I wanted to share my “How to Start a Cooking Club” tips for any of you ladies out there that might be interested in starting your own.
How to Start a Cooking Club
Find other Peeps. You can recruit members at work, as well as your gym, neighbors, church, or playgroup. Extend a personal invitation to potential members. You may find members among your acquaintances.
Organize. Will you rotate houses and have potlucks? Or will you cook all or some of each meal together? Will there be a theme?
Here are some of the logistics we decided on for our group:
- Meet once a month at various homes.
- We are asking that all group members commit to attending at least 7 out of the 10 meetings in 2011.
- As much as we love our children we are asking that the cooking club be a kid-free place (unless of course you’re breast -feeding)
- Each month we will have a theme and each member will bring an item that fits within that theme.
- Prepare your food in advance and bring enough for each person to sample. (Note: A sample means just that – a small portion).
- The week before a meeting the coordinator will email everyone a reminder email asking people what they will be bringing (not the recipe; just the item). We will then use our Facebook Group to communicate what everyone will be bringing so we don’t have 20 lasagna’s 🙂
- Each attendee will bring enough copies of the recipe she brings to hand out among the group. At the meeting we will go around and have each person give a quick description of what they made and then sample lots of delicious meals.
- Attendees will bring Tupperware to bring leftovers home for future meals.
Keep Talking. The key to a successful group of any kind is communication, communication, communication. Between emails and our Facebook Group we’re always interacting with one another. I’ve also heard of other cooking clubs who use a blog to communicate with one another. Blogs are the best, huh?!
Have Fun with Themes. We decided that we’d have a theme for each month. To see the Scottsdale Cooking Club theme list click here. But get creative for your club – these were just our ideas for this year.
Document the Memories. We have every intention of taking lots of pictures at our meetings AND posting about our experience. That’s why we’ve asked a new guest blogger, Mandi Noland, to join our team and post recaps of our months meetings along with 1-2 of her very favorite recipes (yahoo!).
Please be sure to check back at the beginning of each month for Mandi’s thoughts. (thanks again Mandi!)
ohhh I LOVE that she is going to do recaps! What a great idea 🙂
I know!!!! Right?! Mandi is going to be AWESOME!
yeah, she is pretty much my best friend, so I may be a little biased 😉
If you’re interested in a few more tips on starting a Cooking Club head over to this link… https://alanandsteph.blogspot.com/2011/05/stephs-pick-cooking-club.html
Hi. Do you have any advice regarding a cooking club without having enough equipment to work on? We are just a bunch of college students and thought it would be cool. Unfortunately, I did not plan ahead. And now the club has 15 members that would look like a bunch of sardines squeezed tight in my can of a room. We couldn’t do rotation because the dorm of most members do not have kitchen at all. Our first “operation” would be at the end of the month.
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