Anybody a member of a Cooking Light magazine supper club?

Hi- Cooking Light magazine started supper clubs in 1999, and there are many in the Chicago area. Does anybody here belong to one? In a supper club, people meet on a regular basis in a member's home, and each member of the supper club brings a dish to share. The clubs usually meet once a month, and members take turns hosting the club. It sounds like it would be fun, and I assume most of the dishes are healthy, since it sprung out of Cooking Light magazine. Here is a link for more information. http://www.cookinglight.com/entertaining/supper-clubs/supper-clubs-how-began-00400000001602/

Thanks,
Nancy

Hi- I take it that there are not too many fans of Cooking Light magazine that visit this site. I thought that there would be at least one person on the board that belongs to a supper club. For anybody that wants to look for, or start a supper club, they can post on Cooking Light's message board. I just realized that there is a meetup supper club that meets in Chicago too. The problem with meetup is that people sign up for a meetup group, and only come to one meeting, and then drop out. The Chicago meetup supper club has 177 members, but only a handful of them show up every month. Meetup also charges the organizer of the group for being on their site. I belong to another meetup group.

Meetup in Chicago has several dining groups that meet in the Chicago area, including a vegetarian one. Hope this helps, Nancy

Hi,

I have a sense you don't visit the Event's board. If you want a supper club, why not suggest it as an event?

I find the meetup seems to work on a different dynamic. The official hosts pay a fee to meetup, then charge a small fee to reimburse themselves from participants. I can see where it not only covers the hosts expenses, it might generate a profit.

On LTH, people meeting in a restaurant will split the bill amongst all participants. At the one meetup dinner I went to, everyone was expected to figure out their portion as well as pay the host $2 each.

There are three LTH food exchanges: a dessert themed, an omnivore and the other vegetarian, who meet once a month, though omnivore is suspended for the summer.

Once there was a wine-pairing meal, where the host matched wines to suggested recipes. It was a lot of fun.

I can easily envision a rotating dinner group, too. It probably happens informally anyway when one person or another has a party, then everyone brings something to share.

Regards,

Hi- I actually attended one of the lunches sponsored by the Evanston Lunch Group a few months ago, and enjoyed myself. I was more interested in finding out if anybody had ever participated in one of these, and whether it was a good experience. Concerning meetup, it depends on the organizer of the group as to whether they want to charge enough to make money. The meetup group that I belong to, only is a part of meetup, because that way we have a easy way for people to let us know if they are coming to the next meeting. People also find out when the next event is. We would rather pay the money to meetup, than maintain our own website. About every 3-4 months, we just pass the hat, and the organizer is definitely not making any money off of this. Some of the meetup groups are set up by people who are definitely in it to promote their business though. The organizer of the meetup supper club, only charges everybody that attends $1, and at her last meetup, only five people attended I think, so I doubt that she made any money. Hope this helps, Nancy

Nancy,

If you have an established group who like to dine together, it is not an expense to e-mail each other and not fork over a fee. I believe the meetup fee for an organizer is around $200 per year.

I have some friends who participate in other internet food communities. They were plainly surprised when I told them our dinners everyone pays including the organizer. They fully expected the organizer to be treated or otherwise compensated.

Regards,