Creating a Meal to Share

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Rachel

A site and service like Casserole depends on the energy and activity of its members to make it thrive. It’s so exciting to see new names cropping up on the site, but now, why not take things one step further?

Once you are signed up, and after such a jubilant weekend, there is no better time to cook up a meal to share with someone in your community!

Sharing a meal is simple:

Click Cook a Meal (found on your Dashboard and at the top of each page when you are logged in).

If you have already created a dish, select it from the drop down menu, or click Create a New Dish to add to your cooking repertoire and fill in some details about what you are cooking. Once you have finished creating your dish, it will be added to your personal roster of dishes – whenever you want to cook it again, it’ll be right there in the drop-down menu!

When it comes to charging for your dish, it’s entirely up to you. You can choose to be reimbursed for the cost of your meal by setting the price at what it cost you to make the dish, or you can choose to serve it up for free, whichever you prefer. We want to make sure that cooking for Casserole isn’t a burden – so if getting a bit back on the cost of your meal means that you are more willing and able to share our extra portions, go for it! You will also notice that we add 20% to what you decide to charge – this 20% goes straight back into keeping Casserole running and helps with things like tech development, campaign and welcome packs and running local events.

Once a dish is created and selected, just set the date, time, and how many portions you will have available.

When you are happy with all your details, click Finish - Your meal will appear on your neighbours’ local menus, letting them know you are cooking!

There you have it! Now there is no excuse – if you are planning to cook up something tasty, and have some to spare, put it up on the site and see who in your area wants a bite!

A Window Display at Hub Redhill!

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Rachel

A project like Casserole is only as strong as the community that supports it, and we are lucky enough to have a pretty stellar group of people helping us get the service in gear! One of the most enthusiastic and actively involved is Hub Redhill, a brilliant walk-in centre and one stop shop for info, advice, products and support for disabled people and their carers in the community, and run completely by volunteers who are disabled or care for the disabled.

From the get go, we knew that Hub Redhill would be an important puzzle piece in getting Casserole up and running, but little did we know how eager and willing Sarah Lynch, manager of the Hub, and the rest of her cohorts would be to not only promote Casserole, but work alongside us to make the service work. They have been brilliant enough to offer up their space and time to help run Casserole in Redhill, and with that in mind, you can now go straight to the Hub Redhill to sign up to Casserole!

Training up Sarah and Pauline to the Casserole sign up process

That’s right, you can walk straight into Hub Redhill, say you want to join Casserole, and one of their trusty volunteers will sign you up right then and there!

To help promote this trusty partnership, the Hub have also let us take over one of their window displays, transforming it into a beacon for everything cooking and everything Casserole. We spent this morning tying up spoons, stacking pots and pans and printing out recipes to create an exciting display that not only catches people’s eyes, but might even inspire their evening meal! Alongside the display, the Hub has been inspired to start a recipe collection for visitors to browse, and are seeking more to add to the collection! So please, if you are in the Redhill area wander past the Hub and pop in to say ‘Hi!’ and see what’s cooking!

Lessons Learnt – Casserole texting and sharing

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Murtz

With a first small step into foodie matchmaking under our belts, bringing together three satisfied Diners and six stellar Cooks delivering top-notch meals, it’s time for a bit of reflection. With that in mind and as promised in the post ‘A New Year‘, the next few blogs will start to delve a bit into what we’ve learnt so far, and how this is helping shape Casserole as a service.

After a couple of visits to local community groups and a market stall in Redhill town (don’t miss us or our cakes at the next stall this Saturday 21 January!), we managed to drum up a lot of interest and signed up 22 Cooks and 4 Diners. With this user group in hand, we started to test how Casserole could work in a few different settings. A big thank you to everyone involved for your feedback – it’s exciting to see this project happening for real and to learn about all your experiences!

We’re beginning to get an idea of exactly what is most important for both our Diners and Cooks. For instance, the importance of a text service in communicating with all involved. In a really quick test we found that out of 5 texts sent out by Casserole 4 replied within 2 mins giving an answer (we later found out the the 5th persons phone had run out of battery!).

An example of the texts used in the Casserole pilot

It makes perfect sense that text services are becoming incredibly useful as more and more people use their mobile phones for important things. For instance, last month when I moved into my new flat, I didn’t have an internet connection set up yet but needed to register my meter readings to get my electricity set up. After registering with Southern Electric they sent me a text and all I had to do was text my meter reading to them. Now the more I text readings, the more accurate my bill will be. Plus if you’re anything like me, your phone is always close by making it easy to fire off a text quickly.

Of course, Casserole will need to use a range of different communications channels to reach a diverse range of participants, but there’s little doubt that using text messaging has already proved one really good way to get people interested and active in the service. This ties in with how banks, postal couriers and supermarkets are all using text services to complement their online and phone services.

Using the Southern Electric text service to save some money + time!

While text messaging has turned out to be a great way to get information and responses out quickly, the Casserole facebook page is proving to be brilliant in building the community around Casserole. Over the last couple of weeks we’ve had a number of people ‘like’ the page and what’s event better, people have started posting what they’ve been cooking for their Diners. This gives Cooks the chance to comment and share culinary tips, not to mention wets the appetite of others to get involved in the service as well!

: Some of the lovely food being discussed on the facebook page

We now know something we didn’t a few weeks ago; text services could be really useful and sharing recipes would be mighty popular.

The range of other interesting info that’s emerged just from this initial small scale prototype alone are making it easier for us to understand and plan how the Casserole service should operate in the long run – from how people sign up and communicate to the cooking and sharing of meals.

To find out even more about Casserole and what we’ve discovered from this initial trial, come join us at the Casserole Lunch and Learn event at Warwick School, Saturday 28 January from 10am-1pm. Want to stay up to date with Casserole? Then join our mailing list or drop Murtz a line at murtz [at] wearefuturegov [dot] com.