Forest BB

Behind The Scenes
17th April 2008
8.30pm

Ryan, Olivier, Gaz, Xabina, Chombee, Zi, Nix

We speak about...
Zi's grant
Grants
Website progress
Budgets – How they work
Food prices/income and kitchen performance
Shop – How it works
Late Hours Catering License + Licensing
External Task Force

Zi's grant
He say thank!
They are making the instruments in Zimbabwe
Wants to get going on workshops
Nix and Zi to decide the time and place
Zi to do Posters and advertising
2 weeks later it starts
Until July....

£100 Grant
Micromusic – music festival in Berlin – they will give us tent – no to grant – not appropriate but we want to be involved. People need to think about what they want to do and work it out later.
We Dream The City – story in Edinburgh – yes they get £100 – let's get the Forest involved in this.
Karo – cycle camp around country – no to grant. but good luck.

Webpage for grants needs to be updated. Ryan and Gaz to do it soon.

Shop – How it works
Nix
2 volunteers at each time.
Shop manager is in charge of money – to be decided at BTS meeting. Responsible for stock and money and liaising with sellers. Also to find the next shop manager.
1 super volunteer each day.
1 normal volunteer also.
Shop needs 1 super volunteer or shop can't open.
Some tentative support from EVS volunteers to be super volunteers.

Responsibility – an agreement has been drawn up. Has a waiver for the Forest in terms of responsibility.
Afghan schools unhappy with agreement but will give some stock to start with.

Jewellery cabinet has been built.

Fitting - some money has been spent.
Nix needs £85 extra. Ok. It comes from merchandise budget. Reprimand for spending £50 on paint.
Don't do it again.

Food prices and Kitchen performance
Kms need to come to BTS meetings.
Our prices have gone down.
Wholesale prices are rocketing.
It is not good.

We need to price our items properly.

This is connected to these important issues:

The point is we need to:
Cash up every day
Night time/day time till
Improve our tracking of money
Neil and Swithun have made a proposal which needs properly looking at:
http://theforest.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?t=4386

THIS TAKES TIME and :
KMs need to budget time appropriately.
(ie You need to be on time, you need to be in the kitchen when you're not on breaks etc) Also people aren't using the till correctly.
KMs need to take advantage of a BM. KMs can have 30 min. lunch break (same time every day) and 30 min. to cash up at end of the shift. (say 6pm - 6.30)

BM needs to make sure you're taking the strain off the kitchen
ie. KM have a hard job and BM is there to help you and this was to be the plan.

AP – Ryan to meet with Kms to talk about these issues regarding time.
Proposal is 45/60 mins where Kms cash up and do orders.
This needs to occur at set times (i.e. 2 - 2.30 / 6 - 6.30)

We need to come up with a working system to track money better and KMs need to get more time to focus on this.

1 month to get a solid system

Olivier will work on a spreadsheet of prices as a first step.
He will need help. It's a big job.

Xabina to think about possible working systems.

Licensing
Late hours catering renewal.
£319
Do we do this? No

We get liquor license for July and August

Ryan doesn't want to be licensee in August.
Who wants to do it?
Could there be a paid position in July/August to be bar manager/licensee?
Forest Working Group to decide on a plan.

Budgets
Budgets have started.
At each WG meeting each one should look at their budgets and what was spent.
Events is down already by -185.
When numbers go negative each WG needs to make spending decisions, not individuals.
Early days and it's working okay.

External Task Force
What is it? Does it exist? Should it exist?
Would it be open? Yes!
It should be in the BTS WG (ie connected to Projects and Grants)
Should have a nice budget (around 1 grand)

Discuss at the next FWG meeting.
Sat 10th May, 11.30. Hall

_________________
the more you think, the more you stink

Cool. Where can FWG members view all the budget information?

budget binder in action room.

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www.ryanvanwinkle.com

Sounds like a productive meeting. Cool.

What is an external task force?

Regarding food prices:

World prices are sky rocketing, but the only price increase happening with us so far is 1-5% on Lomond. I think this comes into effect at the start of next month. We're using the spring guide for Green City right now. When the summer guide comes out I will check closely for increases. I suspect some staples like rice will go up, but this will not be an across the board thing - yet.

Very few prices were changed with the new menu. Mainly it's just the double shot coffee has gone down in price.

Alex spent lots of time pricing out food not so long ago. We need to find out where his numbers are. Hopefully in a spread sheet and not on the back of a napkin. Get Olivier to speak to him before he starts this enormous task.

People aren't using the till correctly because we're back to the old one. Sometime while I was away in December the old one got fucked. I don't know what's wrong with it. It sits in many pieces under the sink.

I will check the thread on the cashing up procedure.

I am happy with a more standardized system for breaks and cashing up. The smokers might think differently, but then, maybe the infinite smoking breaks are part of the problem?? Does the BM have standardized breaks and hours too?

It's Funnybones going up in price, not Lomond.

External Task Force = All operations outside the cafe itself.
Golden Hour Tour
Ras Babi at St. Pauls
etc.

A Forest needs legs.

_________________
Pep Up The Turmoil

Happy to help with the spreadsheet: never done anything like that, though, so not sure what is needed to be done, how to do it and if some special skills are required.

cool, will study folder later

This external group and its massive budget will need more explaining to me.
its seems a bit of an arbitrary split to me.
Why should a book launch or record launch not in the forest suddenly be in a different group to one in the forest? it'll be the same people surely?
honestly, my first reaction to this is that this is an attempt to get the FWG mega-budget back.
good topic for next FWG meet.

the forest likes to go to a festival: green man or knock or micro disco. when we attempt to represent ourselves in any way out side this building in a manner which is consistent with our beliefs - than that is an external task force. it was around on the old committee structure but we kind of forgot about it.

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www.ryanvanwinkle.com

Apologies I could not attend, I was on a night shift.

Calum

due to pound plummeting in relation to the euro, the cost of a batch of coffee has gone up by about £50 (roughly 11%) compared to last summer.

Fuck. Bill bought a whole bunch more today. I would have suggested just switching back to the old stuff. £50 for 50kgs isn't going to affect things much though.

sorry! the £50 figure is correct. the 11% is wrong.

£50 is 62 euro at the current rate. with a batch at about 456 euros, the increase is more like 13.5%

fuck!

So how do We Dream The City arrange to get their grant from us? I need to reply to them but don't know what to tell them.

_________________
I've had it with you. If I had an image of a laser gun I would absolutely position it right here in my hand...
Ha! I have a real laser absolutely positioned in my hand!

ryan or calum can write a cheque. mail it to them.

We Dream The City say:

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I've had it with you. If I had an image of a laser gun I would absolutely position it right here in my hand...
Ha! I have a real laser absolutely positioned in my hand!

When oh when will the 'r' go back into brainstorm.

_________________
Pep Up The Turmoil