Hunger Lunch

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Revision as of 17:35, 25 July 2007

Hunger Lunch

Hunger Lunch is Nourish International's flagship venture. The lunch consists of rice, beans, texas pete and cornbread, all at an affordable price of $3-$4.

History

Fall 2002 -- Sindhura Citineni founds Hunger Lunch on UNC's undergraduate campus, inspired by the Hunger Lunch program created by Kelly Fogleman at UNC's medical school. The idea was simple: serve a meal of rice, beans and cornbread for $3 all you can eat and invest the proceeds in a sustainable development project abroad. At the time, Sindhura's organization was called, you guessed it, Hunger Lunch.

Spring and Summer 2003 -- In the first year, Sindhura raised $8,000 through Hunger Lunch and used the funds to support a supplemental drink program in Hyderabad India. During this time, the food was provided by UNC's campus dining services.

2003-2004 Academic School Year -- Hunger Lunch generates $8,000 at UNC for the second year in a row.

2004-2005 Academic Year -- UNC Dining Services raises the cost of lunches twofold, forcing Hunger Lunch to find a different food provider. For the Fall semester, the food was provided by various sorority kitchens. In the spring of 2004, food was provided by the UNC Medical School cafeteria.

2005-2006 Academic Year -- Hunger Lunch at UNC switches food providers one more time, to TROSA, a rehabilitation clinic based in Durham, NC. TROSA runs a catering company to help support itself as well as provide culinary training for its residents. Each lunch is purchased from TROSA at a fair price, making the Venture sustainable in the long run. Hunger Lunches begin at Duke University -- TROSA provides the food there as well.

2006-2007 Academic Year -- UNC begins holding weekly Hunger Lunches, replacing the old schedule of biweekly lunches. NC State holds its first Hunger Lunch in spring 07, selling grilled cheese sandwiches instead of rice and beans.

2007-2008 -- Nourish International is in the process of attempting Hunger Lunches at new universities, including the University of Michigan and Virginia Tech. If you are a Nourish chapter launching Hunger Lunch, please add yourself to the list!

Launching Hunger Lunch at Your University

Launching Hunger Lunch requires four major developments.

1. First you need to navigate your university's maze of red tape. Find out what the policies are on starting a student group, selling food and getting permits to set up in your desired location.

2. Secondly, you need to recruit a core team of people. Organizing anything takes people, and Hunger Lunch is no exception. Fortunately, college campuses are rife with people interested in volunteering with something as awesome as Hunger Lunch.

3. Once you have a core team of people you need to find a food provider. This is often he most difficult challenge of Hunger Lunch, but also the secret for sustainability.

4. Once the food provider is in place, it is time to plan the event! This includes organizing volunteers, and publicizing the event to maximize turnout.

Leadership Team

One person can take on multiple tasks; however, separation of duties spreads out the work load and allows for greater participation.

Hunger Lunch Director

The director is in charge of reserving the venue for every Hunger Lunch and thus serves as the liaison between Hunger Lunch and the university administration. The director recruits and assists the other HL leaders and spends extra time creating ways to make Hunger Lunches even better. The director also recruits volunteers with the volunteer coordinator and is responsible for training volunteers.

Volunteer Coordinator

The volunteer director is in charge of soliciting volunteers for each hour of the Hunger Lunch, including setup (10am-11am), cleanup (2pm-3pm), and every hour in between. The volunteer director also sends out an email to the listserv before each lunch reminding all volunteers and members about the lunch and what times they signed up for volunteering. The volunteer coordinator works closely with the Hunger Lunch director to train the volunteers. The idea is that the volunteer coordinator will replace the Hunger Lunch Director the following year.

Food Liaison

Someone needs to order the food each week. This can be simple and straightforward, but it demands prompt, weekly action.

Publicity Chair

Someone needs to get the word out. This is the job of the whole chapter, but if someone is chosen to lead the efforts, they will be more coordinated.

Food

The goal is to find a food provider that can provide the food at an affordable cost on a regular basis (weekly or biweekly, depending on how many Hunger Lunches you are willing to hold). UNC-CH's food provider, TROSA, is able to provide the food at a cost of ~$1/plate.

Here is a sample food budget for a typical Hunger Lunch:

Supplies List

Sam’s Club, or another bulk warehouse, is the best place we’ve found to get supplies.

Necessary Plates Forks Napkins Frank’s Red Hot Sauce Cups Food stands Sternos – can be ordered through cafeteria Stemmed Lighter Cash box/change

Icing on the cake Radio Banners/signs (advertisements for NI)

Event Planning

Alright. Your food provider is set and the team is ready. Now comes the exciting part -- running your first lunch!

1. Choose a location. Reserve the location for all the days you want it during the semester. Reserve an indoor location in addition to an outdoor location in the event that it will rain. Reserving it all at once saves time. We recommend starting with a lunch every 2 weeks to start out. Once you get the hang of running Hunger Lunches, we recommend holding them on a weekly basis. We have found that Wednesdays are the ideal day to hold a lunch, but Tuesdays and Thursdays work as well. The key is to stay away from Mondays and Fridays.

2. Order the food 1 week in advance. Judging HOW much food to order is an art that takes time to learn. There are a few general rules of thumb to keep in mind, however. First, err on the side of ordering less in the beginning. For instance, we do not recommend ordering more than enough food for 100 people at your first lunch unless you are confident that you can attract more than 100 people. If there is a high chance of rain, order less. If it is going to rain for sure, I would order half as much as I normally would. If the weather looks like it will be drop dead gorgeous, order more. To give you an idea of scale, Hunger Lunch has been operating at UNC since 2002, and the most plates we have ever served at a single lunch is ~350. In the beginning, lunches may attract many less people -- it takes time to build a customer base. To do this,

3. Refer to Sales and Marketing for tips on how to make your Hunger Lunches wildly successful. Getting the food, location reservations and volunteers takes a lot of time and planning, and while they are completely necessary, it is Sales and Marketing that will determine how successful your Hunger Lunches are. The sky is the limit. There is nothing stopping you from getting 1,000 people at your lunches. With enough energy, it is possible. $3-$4 all you can eat speaks volumes to hungry college students.

4. Recruit volunteers to fill each time slot of the lunch. We recommend holding the lunch from 11am - 2pm. This means you will need volunteers from 10am - 3pm. It takes an hour to set the lunch up, and an hour to clean up. Murphy's Law loves Hunger Lunch. Create an electronic mailing list for Hunger Lunch volunteers via Icontact, and include a list of volunteers and the times during which they are volunteering. Remind volunteers which slot they are volunteering before each lunch.

5. Running the event. Ok, it's 10:30am, the food is running late, and half of the volunteers didn't show up. On top of that, you have to head to class in 15 minutes and you are not sure whether the next shift will be able to handle the situation without you. There is no amount of training that can prepare you for situations like this. The best advice I can give is that anyone who has ever run a Hunger Lunch for a semester can relate to this scenario. It happens. It sucks. But we deal with it and we learn a heck of a lot in the process. Scenarios like these can be avoided by recruiting more volunteers at each time slot and communicating clearly and frequently with your food provider. It is essential to have contact information for everyone involved with the lunch's operations. If the food is late, but you have the number to reach the food provider handy, at least you can contact them and get an idea of when the food will arrive. Similarly, if you can call the people on the next shift, you can take action by letting them know what the situation is before they get there. All you can do is be prepared. At least that way, you'll have done everything in your power.

Publicity

Please refer to the Sales and Marketing section for advice on how to get Hunger Lunch from 0 customers to 300 and beyond.

Here are a few ideas specifically related to Hunger Lunch:

Provide Hunger Lunch for free to freshmen during your first lunch. If you get a freshmen to start buying Hunger Lunch, you'll have a long term customer for 4 years! Provide Hunger Lunch for free to sophomores the next week, juniors the week after that, and seniors the week after that. That way, you don't break your bank, but you develop new customers and good will in each class.

If you hold lunches outside, get an acapella group to perform in front of the lunch once every hour. It usually draws a crowd. When the group is done singing, make an announcement for Hunger Lunch.

Finances

If run well, Hunger Lunch can be your chapter's cash cow. To give you a little insight on how the finances of Hunger Lunch should break down take a look at UNC-CH's Hunger Lunch accounting documents which are listed below. Please refer to the Finances article for instructions on how to read an manipulate the Google spreadsheet accounting documents.

• Hunger Lunch Accounting 06-07
• Hunger Lunch Accounting 05-06

Contacts

Joel Thomas

See Also

List of Ventures Home Page