Feast Steward Handbook

​1.​ Purpose

This document provides Lochac Feast Stewards with an overview of:

  1. The mandatory requirements for events with food in Lochac, shown in blue; these must be followed
  2. Guidance regarding common ways to ensure a positive and successful catering; these should be followed

A successful feast needs to address a number of elements, of which food is a major one. For food at a feast to be successful, it needs to meet three essential criteria:

  • Courses needs to be served on time,
  • Dishes must be safe to eat and served at the correct temperature, and
  • The feast must be value for money.

In addition, your menu:

  • Should eat well as a meal: each of the dishes in a course should complement each other, not fight each other, and should be appropriately seasoned.
  • Should not be overtly mundane: it should be authentic to the time and place you are trying to evoke.
  • Should cater for known allergies.

​1.2​ Scope

This document should be used in conjunction with the Lochac Event Steward Handbook [link].

This document covers all catering in the Kingdom of Lochac. Care has been taken to separate jurisdictional and legal entity requirements (SCA NZ Inc and SCA Ltd).

This isn’t about teaching you to cook medieval food, but rather about sharing with you a series of questions that you need to answer to take your food catering from concept to success.

1.3 Event management process

Events are managed through a sequence of stages to ensure appropriate planning and oversight:

  • Planning and proposals
  • Review and approval
  • Prior-to-event preparation
  • On the day event management
  • After the event

Providing food at event presents a significant risk that warrants care and attention to detail, and risks should be identified and managed at each stage of the food management process.

Subsequent sections of this document cover each of these stages. 

The Quick Reference Checklist for Feast Stewards [link] is available to help Feast Stewards mark key milestones.

​2.​ Planning & Proposals

2.1 Types of catering

There are no limits to the approach to catering, however they loosely fall into the categories of:

  • Potluck
  • Feast
  • Light meals (e.g. afternoon tea)
  • Tea and coffee
  • Alcohol service

An event can incorporate any number of these options.

2.2 Event proposals

As events must only proceed with the approval of the Local Group Seneschal and respective group Council, event proposals are required to ensure all critical information is prepared in advance. Feast Stewards play a critical role in preparing an event proposal.

Templates are available for an Event Proposal Template [link] and an Event Budget Template [link].

Feast Stewards may approach their Local Group Seneschal, Reeve, B&B or experienced Stewards for support in developing an event proposal before submitting it to a Council meeting.  The less experienced you are, the larger the scale of the event, and the more novel or innovative your proposal is, the more important and helpful such prior consultation will be.

2.3 Catering

If there is to be a feast or other catering, a Feast Steward must be appointed, ideally as early as possible, as this is often a very large amount of work to organise.

2.3.1 The role of the Feast Steward

Event approval appoints the Event Steward as the primary responsible person for all decision-making purposes that relate to the event, while the Feast Steward is ultimately responsible for safely providing food at the event. Further information about these responsibilities is provided in the Lochac Issue Resolution Policy and Procedures [link once available].

Usually the Feast Steward has a feast budget, typically expressed as dollars per head.  What is reasonable here is a matter of experience; dishes served to tables are generally the most expensive, buffet dinners can be cheaper, and lunches can usually be done inexpensively.

Where alcohol is to be served, it’s important to understand and comply with liquor license laws for each State or Country.

If you are the Feast Steward, or are considering the role for an event, the following seven questions will help ensure you are well positioned to take on this role:

  1. Can you work with the Event Steward?
  2. Have you got the right people to support you?
  3. How big is the event?
  4. Are you appropriately qualified to cook the event?
  5. How much do you know about the venue?
  6. What sorts of constraints do you have with your menu?
  7. What is your theme?

2.4 Event team

2.4.1 Can you work with the event steward?

Your relationship with your event steward is vital, so seriously think about whether or not you’ll work together effectively. If you are comfortable with the idea of working with them, then start to consider the rest of the points below. If not, stop now. Both you and the steward will be happier in the long run.

2.4.2 Have you got the right people to support you?

While it is tempting to start planning your menu straight away, make sure you know the skills and experience of your people. This will govern what you can cook effectively, and how many people you need to support you.

If you’ve got four cooking laurels and you’re doing a 40 head tavern event, it should be an absolute breeze. Although double check your cooking laurels – what were they actually laurelled in? That 13th century Icelandic fish preservation technique might not help you cook a 16th century Italian feast for 150 if they’ve never done it before, same thing for the research laurel who has never done a practical. Be fair to you and fair to them in your understanding and estimation of their skills and experience If you’ve got three people who have never cooked before and you’re doing lunch for 100, you will have a
challenge on your hands, unless you are used to managing unskilled workers.

You need to understand the experience and ability level of each person you want to work with and you need to verify it. This sounds a bit harsh but it comes down to the fact that as the feast steward, you are accountable for the end result. If you’re an experienced feast cook, you’ll know how long it takes you to gain an understanding of someone’s abilities. If you’re new to the gig, ask around; get an indication from someone you trust.

Find a mentor who is willing to hold your hand. Have your potential team member over for dinner and cook a meal together. This will accomplish a couple of things – you’ll get dinner (hurrah!), you’ll get an understanding of their cooking ability, you’ll have someone more experienced to help you ask the right questions and evaluate results, and you’ll also get to see how you work together in a kitchen. Don’t underestimate that last bit.

You need a team that will work well together (that can be a mix of experienced and new people). Check in with the people you want to work with to see that they are comfortable working together. The last thing you want is to accidentally put a couple of people who can’t stand each other together in a kitchen and then add pressure. It may sound a little hippy dippy but a happy kitchen makes better food – and much less stress for you as head cook.

2.5 Expected attendance

2.5.1 How big is the event?

If you’ve been an attendee at a number of events in your group, you’ll have an indication of what the average size event is. Check with the Event Steward what the expected minimum and maximum numbers are. Have you ever cooked for a group of that size?

  • If yes, okay proceed to the next question.
  • If no, you need to work some things out. The transition from cooking to catering can be problematic if you don’t think it through.
    • Be reasonable in your assessment of your own skills – are you a confident domestic cook?
    • What’s the largest number of people you have cooked for?
    • Do you have people with experience that you can check in with – a mentor or extra hands to give you support?

2.5.2 Are you appropriately qualified to cook the event?

This is not about your cooking skill, this is about the legislation that governs hospitality and catering in your state and its requirements when people pay to eat food someone else has made. You want to set yourself up to succeed so let’s ensure you’re doing that right from the start.

Food safety standards place obligations on Australian food businesses to produce food that is safe and suitable to eat. A food business is any business or activity that involves the handling of any type of food for sale, or the sale of food in Australia.

Charity and community groups (that’s us!), temporary events and home-based businesses are exempt from some of the requirements in the food safety standards. You must check with your local enforcement authority [link] to see what you are required to do. This is an important thing for your local group to consider and you should discuss it with your Local Group Seneschal to ensure that you and your group really understands what its responsibilities are under the relevant law for your state or territory. Even though our events are exempt, it is still an excellent idea to be familiar with all the legal
requirements for the safe management of food.

2.6 Venues

2.6.1 How much do you know about the venue?

The facilities of the venue your steward wants to book need to be considered when planning your kitchen.

  1. Does the venue have a kitchen – some venues don’t which can be a nasty surprise for any cook. Consider:
    1. How much preparation and storage space it has
    2. Whether or not it has been fitted out as a domestic or commercial kitchen, as that will dictate how much food can be cooking simultaneously.
    3. Dishwashing/handwashing arrangements (this should be separate)
    4. The number of people who can comfortably work in the kitchen at the one time.
    5. Think about what key appliances you need to deliver the meal you want to cook and check they are there.
  2. Does the kitchen meet your needs – if your steward has used the venue before, they’ll be able to give you an idea of the kitchen. This is a good start, but don’t stop there. Talk to any cooks who have previously cooked in that kitchen. If at all possible, you should go and inspect your venue’s kitchen yourself. It can be helpful to take the opportunity to talk to the venue staff when inspecting as they may be able to let you know certain quirks or special conditions of use. And other useful info, like where the rubbish goes. If possible, test it all to make sure it works and confirm it again
    the week before. You might not get a chance to see how quick or slow your oven is at that time but at least make sure it will turn on and reach temperature. None of this is a showstopper, however it will govern what you can and you can’t do successfully. If your hall has basically a domestic kitchen, it will make cooking a feast for 200 in it very difficult unless you’ve specifically chosen a menu to work with those conditions or provided extra infrastructure through bringing or hiring additional equipment. You should also consider plating and serving – do you have an area where you can set out platters and dishes ready for servers to collect. If the feast is large and/or the kitchen is small, ensure the steward has allowed extra tables and a separate room or screened off area for this!

    If the kitchen has limited facilities, consider what other options are available:

    1. Cook in advance and freeze – who has freezer space?
    2. Cook the day before and serve cold
    3. Bring in cooking equipment – gas burners, BBQS, pie warmers, etc. (hired or borrowed) – consider cost and transport logistics.

2.7 What sorts of constraints do you have with your menu?

At the heart of it, people need to enjoy the meal that they are eating. As outlined above, your menu should be within the skill set of your team (this might not be the time to go the full Heston). Also, (1) your dishes should complement each other, (2) it needs to reflect the palate of your audience, and their allergies, and (3) it should be appropriate to your steward’s event concept/theme and budget.

We all have preferences for the type of food we like to eat. These aren’t right or wrong; they’re just what we like, and they will absolutely determine the reception of your menu, so you need to learn to work with, and perhaps, educate where needed, your feasters.

This is also true of groups. How often have you heard people say “I don’t really like medieval food”? What they are really saying is that flavours, textures and ingredients which they have experienced as medieval food isn’t to their taste. As a feast steward, you can help change that – after all, if you think about it, it’s a bit like saying “I don’t like modern food”. What, really? All of it? You’ve eaten every dish from every culture? What you don’t like is particular dishes from a particular culture cooked in a particular way and that’s okay.

It really helps to think of your menu as an opportunity rather than a limitation. Your menu might be the one that introduces a member of your populace to their all-time favourite food that they just haven’t tried yet. So don’t be disheartened and just give up, be clever and think about how you construct the menu, and cater to a range of eaters from timid to adventurous.

Think about the number of likely guests. There are dishes that work at 50 but due to the amount of preparation and cooking time involved won’t work for 100 and above. It’s important to understand the impact that scaling up the number of guests will have on your food. Consider storage, preparation, defrosting time, cooking time and plating time. All of these will be impacted by the volume of food required. If you are really keen to make high effort dishes, consider doing these on a small scale for high table

At this point, it’s important to have set the parameters of how much you are prepared to customise your menu for people who are attending. We are not professional chefs and generally we are not providing a la carte dishes which makes customising dishes for dietary requirements challenging. You need to work out who you can feed up front and communicate that respectfully and clearly to your steward and to the potential guests. What can you do safely and easily? It is reasonable to provide a vegetarian option but providing a vegan option might not be viable. You may not be able to provide kosher or halal food if your kitchen set up doesn’t allow for it.

2.8 What is your event concept or theme?

The theme for your menu should tie in with the overall theme of the event, or at least should not be at odds with it. If your steward is planning a “Viking” style event, giving them a menu which only includes 16th century Mediterranean cuisine is unlikely to enhance the overall ambience of the event. You can still make those choices, but make them in an informed manner and with the support of your steward. Like most things in the SCA, it’s actively understanding the choices you are making and being able to explain them. An example might

A great way of creating ambience is by make a soteltie or entremet (French). Rachel Grimmer has summed this up perfectly “An entremet (French) or subtlety/soteltie (English) was an item served to mark the end of a course at a meal, or between courses. It was a demonstration of the cleverness of the cooks and the wealth and wit of the host.” For our purposes, we’re talking about edible items rather than an entertainment piece. Rachel goes on to say “The concept of a subtlety is very wide in scope. It encompasses:

  • simple, decorated food e.g. frumenty decorated with edible colours and gold leaf in a coat of arms,
    shaped bread
  • illusion food and fantasy food – food made to look like something else e.g. bacon made from marzipan, sugar paste playing cards, a roasted chicken knight with helmet and lance mounted on a roasted suckling pig, a castle made from pastry and filled with custard cream
  • cooked birds re-dressed in their skins and feathers, birds made to breathe fire or to make noise
  • elaborate marchpane (marzipan) or sugar paste sculptures and moulded jellies
  • food on trays made to look like clouds, lowered from the ceiling by ropes
  • a dish presented with an accompanying song or poem
  • a combination of edible and non-edible items and entertainment – a ship on small wheels which appears to sail up the dining hall and mounts a battle against a castle full of soldiers.

There is a lot of overlap between subtleties and non-edible between-course entertainments, and there might be a general theme linking food items and entertainment.”

If you decide to do this, how much are you allocating for them from your budget? Don’t forget to check what will work with the event, your guests, your available skillsets and your budget. Work out if the soteltie will be made by the main kitchen crew or by someone else.

2.9 Pricing and Budget

2.9.1 How much is your budget, and is it viable?

The amount of money will directly impact what sort of food you can provide. This makes it a key factor in the conversation with your steward about their concept.

Sometimes the budget reality of an event is in competition with a really cool theme or idea, you might want to recreate the menu of the four kings of Bavaria listed in Markus Rumpolt (1581) but if you’re looking at $5 a head, this simply won’t be possible. Alternately if your steward is looking at a tavern event and has budgeted $20 a head, you may want to discuss dropping the food budget and making the event cheaper for everyone to attend. Establish a reasonable budget with your steward and work within your parameters. People really want to feel they get value for money at a feast, so make sure your food matches the expectations of the event.

How do you know what a reasonable budget is? To give you a rough estimation: $5 -7 for a lunch, $10-15 for a lower end feast, $15-20 for a high end feast. This is purely for your food and associated grocery costs (baking paper, pie plates, kitchen gloves etc.). Being able to buy in bulk will reduce your costs. For example: the food budget for Fields of Gold is $27.50 per head – based on that, we provide a soup kitchen, two breakfasts, two lunches, a feast (including sotelties) as well as snacks and tea and coffee. The budget for the 20th Anniversary Good Food Feast was $20 per head for food and beverages (including alcohol). Think about what resources are available in your area to reduce the cost of your ingredients while still maintaining a reasonable quality – use farmer’s markets, bulk supermarkets such as Costco, and don’t be afraid to talk directly to some suppliers like Country Meats or Bidvest.

Young children will be supervised by their parent and tend to eat very little: consider making them free.  Older teens can eat a lot, but those families may not be able to attend if you charge full price.

You may provide an Off board option, for people whose dietary requirements cannot be met.  Typically this is the regular attendance price minus the food budget.

It’s possible your Reeve can find some recent figures on actual spends, or speak with experienced stewards about likely costs.

The Event Budget Template [link] provides a useful framework for helping calculate pricing and budget.

Your proteins are likely to be the most expensive part of your food cost (see menu testing) so if your steward is looking for a BBQ meat spectacular, you may need to ask them to increase your budget.

Does your budget include money for infrastructure if it is required? For example, do you need extra freezers, ovens, gas cookers etc.? Does everything in the kitchen at the venue work? Are their oven racks? Make sure this expenditure is evaluated and listed separately to your food budget to make sure you have enough for both.

How are you floating the event? There is no requirement for any steward to be out of pocket – you can request a float of the food budget from your group’s council to buy the things you need for the event. If you have a spreadsheet of ingredients matched to your recipes, this will ensure there are no last-minute budget surprises (see menu testing and standard recipes).

3.​ Event Review and Approval

Official SCA events may only be run if they are sponsored by an official branch of the SCA. Events must not proceed without first receiving approval from the relevant group Seneschal. Feast Stewards must wait for this approval before proceeding any further.

​4.​ Prior to the event preparation

​4.1​ Menu planning and testing

4.1.1 Menu Planning

You can use seasonal produce to help flavour your event. We’re lucky that modern farming techniques allow us to eat many ingredients all year round however this wasn’t available to the medieval cook. One of the ways of presenting a balanced menu is to use dishes that are complementary to the season. That will also influence the enjoyment of your diners – heavy hearty dishes will warm up your diners in winter and make them feel well-fed, but light cooling ones will help with the summer heat. Cooking seasonal produce will also keep your food costs down.

You also need to remember that the structure of your menu needs to work for the event. The length of the event and other activities that need to happen on the same schedule (like court) will affect how and when you can serve food. Have a chat to your steward so that you can work in with the other needs of the event, and have a plan in case other activities run over time. This will help you plan the number and size of the courses you serve.

The number of courses also impacts the serving sizes for each individual dish. You need to think about how much food the average person can eat during one sitting. Your mundane equivalents are the degustation menu, yum cha, tapas (multiple small dishes served in a row) vs an a la carte dinner of entrée, main, dessert. The size of the dishes will vary, as the overall amount that people can eat doesn’t vary particularly.  You also need to consider the time – people will eat less as the night gets later.

At most, a good indicator is 150-200g of cooked protein per person for the entire meal. You can adjust this but have reasons for doing so (e.g. we tend to allocate larger portions for the Saturday night feast at Fields of Gold however this is done on the basis that we will be using leftovers for the Sunday lunch).

You might want to consider the following as a guide to amounts at a meal:

  • 200g protein (150-200g meat/100-150g fish) – 200g protein all up, including fish, assuming no leftovers for lunch. Remember many people will not eat fish at events unless they are very comfortable.
  • 60g vegetables
  • 85 – 115g heavy starch vegetables like pumpkin, carrot, parsnips, peas (mundanely you’d find it was
    likely to be potato)
  • 60g rice
  • 30g cheese
  • 100g bread
  • 112g dessert

Remember if you’re doing a number of dishes, you don’t need to provide enough for people to have a full portion of each. If you’re worried about running out, bulk up on cheaper items like bread and salad. Remember to bear in mind the activities that have been running that day. If half your attendees are coming off the war field, they are unlikely to have eaten a proper lunch and are likely to eat more, and be hunting for proteins to replace the muscle damage they have incurred.

Having a range of options is really important to give your menu balance. Check that each course has enough for each person to have some choice. Think about your vegetarians and other known allergy groups in your attendees. Make sure there is one decent filling, substantial choice per course. (This shouldn’t just be salad). If your dishes involve high fat content, make sure you enough acids in the dish to cut through those fats. Think about the ratio between fresh, pastry, wet and dry dishes. It can be very easy to overload on type of dish
particularly if you are enthused about things you are trying at present.

Remember to scale your menu – we’re not used to eating feasts so our natural instinct is to go hard in the first course. Put your big bulk (cheaper) dishes in your first course and your more expensive specialty dishes – which you can serve in smaller quantities -in your second. A good rule of thumb is to reduce the volume of each course – some cooks use a 20% reduction each course, others make their second course 50% of the first and their third course 25% of the first. Work out what works for your local group. If you have unusual dishes that you want people to try, put them in the first course – people are more likely to try things when they are hungry.

Before you commit to your menu, you also need a realistic plan of how much you are cooking on the day.
Remember to think about your venue and what facilities are available to you. You need to consider storage, preparation, cooking and plating so have an idea as to what you think will work. Where you can, buy yourself extra time by cooking food in advance, but make sure you have the right storage available for it (food safe containers, freezer space), as well as the ingredients for things you are cooking on the day.

If you think about all of these aspects, the odds are in your favour that you will have a pretty decent menu. You may even come up with more considerations and I’d love to know what that are so I can add them into the next edition of this guide!

A range of Example Feast Menus [link] are available.

4.1.2 Testing your menu

So you’ve gone through the books and come up with a draft menu – the next stage is testing. I cannot overstate the importance of test cooking. Test cooking is the difference between a good dish and a great one. If I have one rule, it would be this: if you have not cooked/tested your recipe before the event, it really shouldn’t be on your menu.

This is particularly important for redactions of period recipes. You are dealing with translations of language both in time as well as origin (e.g. high German is not the same as low German which is not the same as modern German), changes in measurement terminology (how much is a peck?), and changes in the palate of your diners. Many medieval cookbooks present redacted versions, but the approach varies – some are true to the source and some bear little relation to the original. If you can, find the original version and do a translation yourself to cross check it (google translate or some very clever friends may be of assistance). Mistranslations happen all the time. Does that word mean poison or fish? An extreme case to be sure but it’s worth having a think about.

Our prime concern always is taste. It doesn’t matter if the dish is the most authentic dish in the world – if it doesn’t taste good, people won’t eat it and your dish is basically a waste. If it does not taste good, can this be improved be changing the proportions, tweaking the spices, or serving with a complimentary dish?

If you want to try something that is an acquired taste, it might be worthwhile making it a taster rather than a main element of your course. Testing your dishes also allows you to test the course as a whole– do your dishes eat well together? What is the best sequence for the dishes? For example custard served with sausages doesn’t’ work as well as custard served with fruit pies.

4.1.3 Standard Recipes

Recipe testing also allows you to develop a standard recipe for a dish. A standard recipe is one which has been tested, and produces a set quantity and with a reliable level of quality. Standard recipes allow for consistency – the dish can be produced the same over and over, by any member of your team with the relevant cooking skills. They minimise waste (the enemy of any good kitchen) by ensuring you know how many serves (at either an a la carte or feast proportion) your base recipe will provide. This allows for scaling of the recipe up or down. A note on scaling. Scaling of recipes is generally finite. There are some dishes that it will and won’t work for. 

Basically, standard recipes are used for the following purposes:

  1. To establish the food cost of each dish (see below).
  2. To write accurate food orders based on the quantity of dishes required, – this should help to control
    under or over purchasing.
  3. To train new team members.
  4. To help in the compilation of new menus.
  5. To control portion size.
  6. To establish the food cost per dish, as a proportion of your overall food budget

Food cost is simply the total cost of your food taking into account any existing inventory, in other words how much the dish costs to make. Understanding exactly what the cost of your dish is will ensure you know what proportion of your per head budget it will take to produce it. And know this means that you get to the event without running out of money, overspending, or having many last minute purchases. An Example Standard Recipe Calculator [link] is provided.

4.1.3 Yield testing

A key element of your testing should be yield testing. A yield test is a process in which raw product purchased in an “As Purchased” form is broken down into edible product and waste. “As Purchased” is defined as the form of the purchased product that needs some preparation before it is ready to be served in its edible portion form. Basically it is a calculation which calculates what you actually get on a plate from the ingredient bought in its raw state. This contributes directly to how much that ingredient will be costed at in your standard recipes.

The Edible Yield % represents the part of the product that is useable. Some foods like flour have a high yield (close to 100%). Others, like fish, can only be assessed after the waste (head, guts, scales and bones in this case) is gone. If you maintain quality standards when purchasing, the edible yield should remain fairly consistent. The Edible Yield % is important in both the costing and purchasing processes. The formula to calculate the Edible Yield % is:

Formula: [(EDIBLE WEIGHT /AS PURCHASED WEIGHT) X 100] = EDIBLE YIELD %

Now we’re not running restaurants so this will not be something that you might choose to do for every
ingredient, however there are some that you should definitely do it for. The simple rule is “if the size changes when you cook/prepare it, you should test for yield”. One ingredient that trips people up is meat, as people often underestimate bone, sinew and fat, as well as cooked weight. Always test any form of meat for its edible yield.

A Yield Calculator Template [link] is available.

4.1.4 Time Impacts

The other aspect to consider is preparation and cooking time. Some dishes are much more labour intensive than others. If the work will be done in advance, ensure there is enough lead time. If it will be done on the day, consider how many cooks, how many hours and what kitchen resources (including bench space) will be required. Recipe testing will help ensure your feast day does not include too many labour intensive recipes.

4.1.5 Service Types

There are many options for food service including individual portions, self-serve buffet, table service and cafeteria style (buffet with specific servers).

Consider how the dishes will be served. Will they be handed around while people are standing, placed on the table before the feast, served to each diner (e.g. soup from a pot – needs 2 servers), dish placed on the table (1 per X diners), platter of dishes (ditto) or buffet? Do you have enough servers?

Think about the type of service you wish to do – self-service (buffet) or served. If you’re going to serve buffet style, think about what you need to do to ensure that your food will stay at the required temperature. You may want to consider hiring soup cauldrons or chafing dishes for your hot food. Also think about fly control. Particularly in Australia, we need to consider this. There will need to be enough serving utensils for each dish and you should have someone watching the service to pick up on any potential food safety issues such as cross contamination (e.g. ladles being used in multiple dishes or dropped tongs).

Plan your service. Count each and every bit of serving ware you have. Work out what dishes will be served in what serving ware. (Write this down on your running sheet and menu).

Count your tables. How many “plates” of food do you need to serve for each dish to be served to the entire feast? There’s nothing worse than serving all the food and then realising you’ve missed a table.

What serving ware needs to be cleared and come back so it can be used again? A lot of groups have a limited amount of serving ware so some upfront planning will mean you know when and where it will be at any point in the meal (and how many dish people you need and when).

4.2 Working with your team

4.2.1 Working with the Event Steward

Communicate with your Event steward regularly during the lead up to the event, and on the day. Keep them advised of your menu, your plans for food service and the progress of your team. You’ll work out how much information they want to know but it’s good to be proactive and keep in touch so they don’t start to worry.

Increase the amount of communication in the immediate lead up to the event. If you’re doing it by email, it’s useful to use headers to let them know what you need from them (FOR RESPONSE, FOR APPROVAL, FOR INFORMATION) so they are able to come back to you.

Talk to them about the timings of the feast/event as a whole. Explain your timings to your steward and let them know any key dependencies (“we’re serving sorbet; it cannot be delayed once we begin service or it will just be cold cordial”). Use them to control spontaneous entertainment and its impacts. Be prepared that things might/will go wrong for them as well. 

Your Event steward is also the person who works with the senior nobility attending and will be able to serve as a liaison regarding Court, both prior to and during the event. Courts are a great thing that enrich the pageantry of our game, however from a food service perspective, courts can be the work of the devil and completely stuff all your careful timing. Utilise your steward to help ensure the court is happening at the least disruptive time possible and to ensure any royalty is aware if any critical kitchen timings.

4.2.2 Planning and working with your cooking team

As outlined above, your menu should be within the skill set of your team.

You may want to consider workshopping the menu with the people who are going to cook it. Have some ideas about what you want to do but organise a time to sit down with (or arrange a chat in whatever medium you prefer) and plan your menu. You’re going to see a lot of questions below, some of these you’ll need to know before you start planning the menu, others may be easier to answer with the help of your team. It is also important to ask a few people who aren’t cooks, but who will be attending the feast if they are comfortable with the menu to get a broader opinion.

4.2.3 Planning your service team

If you are serving the feast are you planning on having a dedicated team of servers? Dedicated servers are recommended for large feasts as it gives you more control. If you do have a dedicated team of servers, make sure that they get fed themselves either with food being kept back for them or provision of a special meal.

If you are going to call for servers, do this early and liaise with your event steward so they know that is how you are planning on serving the meal. Work out how many servers you will need and be specific in your requests (i.e. I need one server from each table).

4.2.4 Planning your clean up team

Think about a clean-up crew. Who is cleaning up between each service, and for pack up at the end of the night? Is this the same team as the cooking crew? How much instruction will they require?

4.3​ Expenditure management

Do you have budget to test the menu prior?

Adjustments to the event budget expenditure must be approved at a Council meeting.

Tax receipts or invoices must be kept for any approved expenditure and, in Australia due to firm GST requirements, must only include approved expenses in accordance with SCA Ltd (Aus) Financial Policy.

Tax receipts or invoices should be:

  • Readable.
  • Scanned-in or photographed and sent to the local Reeve in a timely fashion.
  • Preferably should only include items for which you are seeking reimbursement. Cross out or clearly identify any personal items bought on the same receipt. In Australia, due to GST rules, the GST will be forfeited from reimbursement if personal items are on the receipt even if they are crossed out.
  • Reimbursements can only be made after a receipt or invoice has been handed to the Reeve.
  • If no receipt is available, a Statutory Declaration must be provided. Any time a statutory declaration is used, the Chancellor of the Exchequer must be informed.

Cash advances can be provided to an individual to pay for items approved in the budget.  Cash advances must be approved by the group Council – or at least the Seneschal and Reeve – before being provided. Any unused money must be refunded to the group. All used money must be accounted for with receipts or invoices.  

Any asset purchased from the event budget remains an asset of the group.

4.4 Food and alcohol safety laws

Food provision laws can vary on Country, State and Council lines and must be adhered to.

4.4.1. Australian events

Food Safety Standard 3.2.2A came into effect in December 2023 in Australia however food provision is not captured by these new regulations, and no further action needs to be taken by groups or officers regarding these standards.

Additionally, no person operating under the banner of the SCA Ltd may sell food to members of the public or those who are not otherwise ticketed attendees of an SCA event. This is to prevent our accidental capture by these regulations, and covers such activities as selling of medieval food at demos and faires.

Individuals or businesses operating at SCA events but under their own banner (such as businesses selling food at Rowany Festival) are not operating as part of the SCA Ltd, and must determine for themselves how these new regulations apply to them.

4.4.2 New Zealand events

There are no food provision laws in New Zealand that are likely to apply at SCA events.

Individuals or businesses operating at SCA events but under their own banner (such as businesses selling food at Rowany Festival) are not operating as part of the SCANZ, and must determine for themselves how these new regulations apply to them.

 4.4.3 Liquor licensing

It’s important to understand and comply with liquor license laws for each State or Country.

4.5 Food and Alcohol Risk Management

​4.5.1 Food Handling

Groups should assist their members to acquire the relevant training (such as food safety supervisor training) as this, similar to first aid training by group members, can greatly improve safety of all participants. A good starting point that can be accessed online is the Do Food Safely [link] training.

As a minimum you should ensure that you will have on site access to:

  • Handwashing facilities
  • Safe food storage, i.e. refrigeration or eskies/ice boxes and closed storage boxes
  • Enough equipment to ensure there is no cross contamination ie. multiple chopping boards, knives, serving trays or bowls and utensils
  • Equipment cleaning facilities i.e. hot water and dish soap
  • First aid kit and gloves

​4.5.2 Safe Food Temperatures

Although potentially hazardous food should be kept at 5°C or colder or 60°C or hotter wherever possible. Additional information is available in the Safe Food Temperatures Guide [link]

4.5.3​ Allergy Management and Dietary Restrictions

At the outset of this event, you set outlines for what dietary issues you would and wouldn’t cater for. However, things will come up that you haven’t thought about (or even heard that it’s an issue for someone) and you should consider those bookings on a case by case basis. I’ve mentioned before that respectful dialogue between people who are attending and people who are cooking is very important. You are a volunteer as well but you have signed up for the job. You have a responsibility to be courteous and professional not matter how frustrated you might be.

Unlike dining at a restaurant, eating at a SCA event is less in the control of the guest with food allergies. Kitchen stewards (and event stewards) must be aware that they are dealing with a “captive audience”—while food allergic patrons at restaurants can choose to go elsewhere, food allergic guests at events may not have this option which is why an off-board price is very important. In a sense many important “screening” steps and decisions may be taken out of the control of food allergic guests, including not having the opportunity to assess the food allergy knowledge and policies of the catering hall. This can cause stress and tension (nothing like being accidentally poisoned) for the guests particularly if they are newly diagnosed with food issues. It’s not an excuse for rudeness but it does explain some of the concerns your attendees might have.

Safety depends on effective communication and partnering between the event steward, the kitchen team and guests. To ensure we all have fun, event stewards need to ask if there are attendees with food allergies and provide those food allergic attendees with opportunities to notify them of any special accommodations. This early communication can help the steward and you plan for safe alternatives when possible. It also gives guests time to work through acceptable and safe alternatives.

It is your role as the Feast Steward to respectfully decline to feed someone if you cannot do it safely. This is particularly important for any guest who allergy will result in anaphylaxis (an acute, potentially life threatening allergic reaction). All kitchen staff, which includes front of the house, back of the house, management, etc., must have understand the protocols for dealing with food allergy. This should include communication, label reading, knowledge of hidden ingredients, prevention of cross contact and/or cleaning techniques and processes for promptly dealing with allergic and other medical emergencies. Our goal is to have fun and make this safe for ourselves and other attendees. Proper awareness will ensure this is happening. 

There are a number of dietary requirements and allergies that you should be aware of when preparing food which are outlined in the Allergy matrix template [link]. Participants should be asked about any dietary requirements during the booking process.

While it can be difficult to cater to all dietary requirements, there are basic protocols that should be followed.

  1. Listen carefully when someone indicates in their booking that they have a food allergy.
  2. Explain to the person what you know to be true about the food being served. Don’t be afraid to say you don’t know.
  3. Check ingredient labels on food packages for allergens every time–food products may change.
  4. Do not serve a food to a person with a professed allergy if you can’t guarantee it will be allergen free, or offer the person with an allergy an off board price.
  5. Disclose ingredients used to prepare dishes.
    1. Avoid using “secret” ingredients. Always indicate whether key allergens are included in the recipe or may have come in contact with the food you are preparing or serving.
  6. Prevent cross contact between allergen-containing and allergen-free foods.
    1. Keep even a trace amount, part, or product of an allergenic food (e.g., peanut, peanut butter, peanut oil) from coming in contact with an allergen-free food or allergen-free food or surface (e.g., counter, bowl, spoon, boards, and knives).
    2. Cross contact measures are not the same as cross contamination measures used to prevent foodborne illness. That is, while many foodborne diseases can be prevented by cooking foods thoroughly, cooking a food containing an allergen will not make the food safe to eat by someone allergic to it.
    3. Wash your hands, workspace, utensils, and pans, and make sure dishes are allergen-free before preparing foods. Where possible, prepare allergen free foods before general foods to reduce the chance of contamination.
    4. Thoroughly clean-up workspace after use.

Additional precautions for kitchen stewards include:

  • Letting all members of the team know what allergies you are catering for. Maintain an allergy register for bookings to ensure that the Feast Steward and Feast Team know what allergies they are catering for.
  • Offering a wide variety of food to accommodate a range of allergies and restrictions. You may wish to choose to provide simple options that can be made from scratch for specific guests. (All hail the spinach and herb omelette – can rescue you in a range of situations).
  • Having a full list of ingredients for your menu available. Provide it to any diner declaring an allergy or food intolerance in advance of the event. Allergy items should be available at the kitchen and food service area as well as a copy at the sign-in table. The Allergy matrix template [link] is a great quick reference guide for showing exactly what dishes are and aren’t safe to eat for individual allergy types.
  • Asking your bookings with dietary requirements to come and say hi at the kitchen. This is good for two reasons (it allows you to know exactly who they are) and it also gives them a sense of comfort if you demonstrate good allergen food handling practices.
  • Informing your servers who are working the event of any specific allergies so that there can be separate meals or offerings prepared in advance. Provide them with copies of the allergy matrix and ingredients list so they can answer any questions from guests.
  • Directly communicating any concerns, strategies, etc., well in advance of the event to all your team
    members (i.e. if you need a clean, separate work space in the kitchen to prepare certain meals/foods).
  • Reiterating and repeating concerns at every step of the planning process and in every communication.
  • Provide an off-board booking option for people whose dietary requirements cannot be met

4.5.4 Alcohol Management

Providing alcohol comes with a unique range of risks, at a minimum ensure that there is a:

  • Process for managing intoxicated participants.
  • Process to ensure service does not occur for minors.
  • Clearly demarkatable area where alcohol is allowed to be consumed.

It is highly recommended that anyone running a tavern talk to experienced tavern keeper beforehand.

4.6 Food pre-event preparation

You now have the menu, you’re happy with the dishes themselves and that they work well together – it is now time to plan your pre-event preparation. The more you can do in advance, the easier it will be on the day, so don’t give yourself too much to achieve at the end. Create the roadmap for who is doing what and when in the lead up to the event. Also talk to your team about money, how it’s being handled and what their responsibilities are when purchasing goods on behalf of the feast. Make sure everyone gets receipts and annotates them with what they were for. Remind them that any purchases for the feast should be on separate receipts, not included in personal purchases. Don’t cross the streams!

Talk to your team about what they would like to do and take that into consideration. Because you know the skills and abilities of your people, you’ll have an idea if the job they are volunteering for is within their skill set. If it’s something that they would like to learn, see if a more experienced person is available to work with them. Don’t create dependencies for the menu without creating support structures to manage the risks involved. This helps keep it fun and also avoids traumatising the group’s future kitchen stewards. Remember you might like to actually just attend a feast and eat some else’s food at some point in the future!

If you need to order in an ingredient, particularly a rare or more expensive one, give yourself enough time for it to arrive when you need it. Count backwards from the feast, factoring in your preparation time and the time it will take for the ingredient to get to you. Your supplier will be able to indicate how long that will be. By starting at your end point and working backwards, you’ll give yourself a realistic, accurate timeline. As in all other cases, if the numbers don’t add up, this is not the time to try and cook this dish.

Remember to consider if you have the facilities to store the raw ingredients safely and also the cooked dish once it is done. A normal kitchen is not usually set up to store the amount of food you’re you will need for catering. Food safety is paramount at all time. We are responsible for the safety of the dishes we prepare. If you are the feast steward, you are accountable for the health and safety of every person who eats your food so knowing the “chain of custody” for each dish is vital. A reference for safe storage temperatures can be found in the
appendices.

Consider presentation – this can add a great deal to the enjoyment of the food and the atmosphere of the feast. How is each dish meant to look? This is something I’m still working on myself. If possible, include a diagram for the person who is managing the pass to refer to when plating the food. (The “pass”: the point where food leaves the kitchen to be served to guests.). Ensure that your planning includes any required garnishes.

Write the food preparation plan down and make it accessible to the whole team. Someone needs to own the plan (that’s you) but it needs to be available to the whole team so they know what’s going on. It also allows team members to offer support and assistance if they have capacity. The internet makes this much easier (there’s a whole range of tools out there to help you share information and update it in real time).

Check in with your team regularly. If you’re not hearing from one of your team in the lead up to the event, you need to keep checking in with them until you get the answers that you need. (NOTE: This is also an important point for the stewards of an event regarding your kitchen team. The question “how are things going?” should receive an answer you are happy with. Ask for specific details that allow you to accurately measure the progress of the team, rather than vague assurances.)

If one of your team is not responding, do not just assume it will be OK – time to instigate Plan B.

Have a strong idea of the timings of your feast. You need to consider how long it will take to serve a course in its entirety, give people enough time to eat it and clear it. You also need to consider what serving dishes you need for each course, if you need to use the same serving ware for the next course, how long it will take to wash and dry the dishes – and who will be doing this?

(It’s not really food preparation but if there is any chance you can arrange a clean-up crew for the kitchen well in advance, you, your body and your team will love you forever).

Ensure your team think about appropriate kitchen clothing before the event. It sounds silly but I have seen people turn up to help in a kitchen that had gas cooking with amazing sleeves that were in imminent danger of going up at any point. Even more importantly, are people wearing good, supportive, closed in shoes? Consider the use of support stockings. Most of us don’t spend the day on our feet so make sure that your team in the best position possible. Think generally about Personal Protective Equipment (hair nets, gloves, aprons) and ensure that you have enough for the event. Oh and tea towels, you can never have too many tea towels.

One of the final things to consider is the condition of your ingredients when they arrive on site and how long you’ll need to ensure that they are appropriate for cooking or eating – do they need defrosting (takes time!), cleaning, trimming, peeling, soaking…. There’s nothing worse than realising the thing you planned on getting done first up is not in any shape to start so plan this as part of your preparation.

Once set, check the progress of your plan and identify any issues that may be arising. This allows you to put resources in place to assist someone in trouble, communicate with your steward about anything arising and potentially change your plans to alternative should your initial idea/plan become unviable

​4.7 Timetable and run sheets

The Event Steward should have prepared an Event Timetable (and ideally a Run Sheet), while this does not need to go beyond key services points for catering, it is an excellent starting point to develop a feast timetable and running sheet. An Example Feast Run Sheet [link] is available.

You also need to allow enough time to check in with the steward and any pointy hats may wish to hold court at any point in your feast and adjust schedules as required.

4.8 Final weeks before the event

Sit down with your team and establish your run sheet for the day – work out what needs to be done when to ensure that each dish will be plated and served on time and at the right temperature. Work backwards, through what is needed to do to prepare for plating (e.g. carving), resting time, cooking time, prepping time, including how long it will take to plate the dishes. Factor in what pieces of equipment need to be used by which dishes. This will ensure that you don’t run out of space in a vital piece of equipment at exactly the wrong time. Be flexible. If you work out that you won’t be able to cook a dish at the time you originally planned it for whatever reason, adjust. Swap dishes between courses if you need to. Even (and this is a worst case scenario) cancel a planned dish if you need to.

A note for kitchen stewards – don’t over allocate yourself. You are the problem solver on the day (and there will be problems (No event is without problems. They are natural. It’s simply the scale of the issue and the amount of risk management you’ve already done. We’ve had ovens stop working, cook tops catch on fire, turning up to the venue to discover they’ve removed half the equipment, team members having last minute life so they’re not available, last minute changes of venues and acts of god occur. All of these can be coped with. You just need to stay calm, take a deep breath and work out what can be done. You can do it!) so you need to ensure that you have the capacity to respond – don’t assume you can be the main cook as well, unless the event is small. 

As part of those final weeks, actively consider the service of your meal. Getting your fabulous food out to your guests is the final step in the successful delivery of your feast menu. If you don’t think about this in advance, it could be the hiccup that stops you hitting the goal of food out on time at the right temperature.

5. On-the-day catering management

5.1 Setup

​On the Event Run Sheet [link], have a clear list of what needs to be done for setting up, in priority order.  Usually, some help is available from attendees.

5.2 Sign-in desk

Check with sign-in to confirm attendees with allergies.

It can be helpful to ask sign-in to invite participants with allergies to check in with the kitchen.

It’s also worthwhile having a plan for dealing with a last minute influx of people at the gate and the maximum number of people you can feed which has been discussed in advance with the event steward and your team. You may not need it but if they turn up, it’s better to have thought about it in advance.

​5.3 Food handling and storage

Make sure all your food is safely stored and then stop and do these things:

  • Tape copies of your run sheet and menu somewhere that is accessible and visible by all team members. Mark things off the list as you complete them.
  • To avoid kitchen interruptions, post a version of the menu with all ingredients for each dish outside the kitchen.
  • Organise the kitchen so that everything of a particular type is in a particular area (i.e. so there is a space for spices, a space for dry ingredients, a space for utensils, for serving ware. etc. etc.)
  • Set up your plating area, as previously agreed with the steward. Make sure there is good access for both the kitchen and servers.
  • Allocate work spaces for each of your team members if you have the space to do so. This will make the space you have work more efficiently.
  • Remind people to clean as they go. This keeps the kitchen organised, sanitary and safe as well as
    reducing the clean-up at the end of the night.

5.3.1 Plating and presentation

Have someone in charge of running the pass. They are responsible for getting the dishes plated and served as required, and collected after service in good time. This takes pressure off the people in the kitchen who are cooking and gives your servers a single point of contact when they have questions regarding the meal.

Court will be more disruptive than you think. Royalty have the best of intentions and want to support you and your team as much as any other member of the populace. They also can provide an amazing opportunity to showcase your food. However… they will run late. They won’t intend to (“we’re only doing x in this court, it will take x minutes”) but they will. They have a lot to do and may not get to your group regularly. Do not start to plate a dish until you know court is ending particularly if it is temperature dependent. Yes, it might delay the service by 10 minutes but the food will go out at the right temperature.

Remember that you will need to bring dishes back in as well as have them go out. This creates space on the feasting table and allows you to access any serving ware in use. But it can also create a logjam in the washing up area of the kitchen which you need to be aware of. If you need to reuse some of those plates in serving the next course or cooking the next dish, make sure your scullery knows these are a priority. And remember to assign them extra help if they need it at key points.

5.3.2 Quality check before serving

The kitchen steward should be the final arbiter of whether or not a dish is served. You are accountable for every dish. Someone else might be responsible for its production; you are responsible for its quality when it leaves your kitchen. Taste every dish – is it good? Is the spicing balanced? If it is burnt, don’t serve it, or change the presentation and serve only the edible portions (this is not possible for soups and stews). It’s better for people to be a little less full than they might have been than to have them eat a burnt dish and have that be the
primary memory of your meal.

5.3.3 Team Management

Your job as kitchen steward means you need to keep an eye on your people as well as well as the meal.

  • Make sure they stay hydrated. Lead by example on this one, drink water and plenty of it. If it’s an
    extremely hot day and you’re working in a hot kitchen, consider whether or not a sports drink might be appropriate. You can buy powders from the chemist and mix them up at the event.
  • Eat. It sounds silly but a lot of us forget to do this when we’re feeding others. Make sure that there is food for the kitchen as well as the event. Protein, carbs, not just sugar. However…
  • Have red jelly frogs. (This may just be a Politarchopolis Assault Catering Corps necessity but we
    thoroughly recommend it).
  • Make sure people are taking their medication if they require it. Like eating, this can get forgotten in the heat of the moment and create a crisis all its own so create an environment where the team knows that looking after itself is a priority.
  • Make sure there is a place for your crew to sit and take breaks – and make sure they actually take them. You need to rest and so does your team.
  • Work out when your team can take breaks. If someone is working for more than 5 hours, they are
    legally required to take a half hour break. This may not be practical, but make sure people get time out – even 10 mins will help amazingly. We have a joke that you can always tell an inexperienced feast cook, they’re standing when they don’t have to!
  • Be vocal in your appreciation. Recognition of effort is one of the simplest ways we can reward our
    people for their work.
  • During the event, the care and feeding of your steward is important. Make sure they know that if they need to, they can drop by the kitchen for a cuppa, a quick snack or a 5 minute time out. You’re in it together, so look after each other.
  • Clean as you go. If someone has time on their hands, get them to clean up – work now means less later.

Like any project, there will be things that go wrong. This is okay. It is the element of surprise that make things challenging and stressful to deal with. Let people know that mistakes are okay and that it’s not only okay to talk about it, its encouraged. (I’m not saying sit around and admire the problem but the sooner you know that something has gone awry, the cheaper and easier it is to come up with a solution). Encourage the team to come up with ideas for solutions and workarounds.

Be flexible. If you start working on something and it becomes apparent that the timeframes originally allocated will not be accurate, adjust them. If this impacts the delivery of your entire event, consider whether or not you need to make a change. Stopping something is sometimes an even braver choice than soldiering on. You might move a dish to the next course, cook it to serve for lunch the next day, or just abandon the dish.

5.4 Incidents and emergencies

5.4.1 Incident and emergency response

While good risk management can reduce or even eliminate risks, it is still possible for things to go wrong on the day.

In accordance with the Issue Resolution Policy and Procedures[link], the Feast Team are responsible for ensuring that during catering related activities, so far as reasonable, steps are taken to prevent further harm by:

  • Addressing any immediate welfare concerns by:
    • directly neutralising the source of the threat (e.g. use extinguisher on fire)
    • preventing any further harm to workers (applying first aid, evacuating people, ceasing activities and isolating the affected area/s)
  • Escalating control to the highest appropriate authority (in an emergency, this is likely to be the relevant emergency service)
  • Securing (e.g. prevent unauthorised entry) and preserving (e.g. prevent disturbance) the scene of any incident that may subsequently require police investigation;
  • Gathering evidence to support any subsequent investigation (e.g. photographs, witness details)

5.5 End of the event

Events have their own dynamic, and the Event Steward will ultimately make the call as to when to close the events. 

5.6 Cleanup

Ideally, you will have a cleanup crew separate from the people who have set up.

6. Post-Event Follow-up

​6.1 Reimbursement

Ensure you have the correct documentation for all your expenses (receipts, invoices, statutory declarations for lost invoices). As part of this, arrange for any reimbursements to occur for your team members in a timely fashion (you should be able to do this as you go if you have received an upfront float).

​6.2​ Event Steward’s Report

Following the event, the Event Steward should compile an event report which should include information about how catering went. A template is available for Event Reporting template [link].

To assist with the Event Stewards Report, thank your team and debrief with them about the experience. Find out what worked well and what could have been improved. Make notes for next time. Depending on the scale of the event you may want to celebrate with your team by going out to dinner or sending individual thank you notes.

Have the same conversation with your event steward. See what worked for them and how you both could make it better next time.

​6.3 Incident and hazard reporting

Any person can report incidents or hazards using the Lochac Incident and Hazard Report[link].

7. Templates and supporting documents

8. Policy and Procedure Resources

 

SCA Governing Documents (Corpora)[link]

SCANZ Policies[link]

SCA Ltd Policies[link]

Lochac Kingdom Law[link]

SCA Ltd COVID-19 Response Plan[link]

Lochac Procedures Manual[link]

Lochac Events Resources[link] : includes link to Risk Assessment Template

9.​ Definitions

Emergency – An incident with potentially life-threatening consequences.

Event approval – The process of confirming that an event will proceed. This is important to:

  • Ensure that the key points needed for event approval can be easily referenced at a group’s Council meeting
  • Provide for future reference: Agendas and minutes are used as a transparent reference for all members of the local group about what event details and expenditure were approved. For example, this information is needed for the Reeve to match approved expenditure with receipts/invoices.
  • Prevent conflict: Sometimes there is mismatch between what the event steward and Council thought was approved and what was actually approved. Having your event proposal attached to the agenda improves clarity for all, saves time chasing up details, and prevents misunderstandings.

Event proposal –  a document detailing the event concept, budget, stewarding team, timetable and other important details

Event report – a formal report on the outcome of the event.

Event roles – Event roles are responsible for coordinating event activities and managing risks that may arise during activities they oversee. All event roles principally report to the Event Steward.

Event Steward – A delegate of the Group Seneschal who has the authority to make decisions about the general conduct of an event.

Incident – A specific occurrence, such as a tree falling, with the potential to cause harm.

​10.​ Additional Resources

Do Food Safely

Tastes From Tournai – The Feasting Primer

11. Version Control

This document is owned by the Lochac Kingdom Seneschal

Version Changes
Feasting-Project-Management-from-Concept-to-Success-V4 (2)  Developed by Mistress Anne de Tournai
2024 – Earl Gilbert Purchase, Countess Bethony Gaitskell, Mistress Anne De Tournai Adapted as a supporting handbook to the Event Steward Handbook
   
   
   
   
   
   

12. Acknowledgments

Specific acknowledge must go to Mistress Anne de Tournai for her comprehensive “Feasting Project Management from Concept to Success” which substantially formed the foundation and content of this handbook.

We also wish to acknowledge contributions from Baron Drake’s (Allergy matrix).

We also wish to acknowledge Lady Constanza of Thamesreach, Felicia ad Aquam, Politarchopolis Assault Catering Corp, and Gertrud von Ritzebüttel (Examples documents).

By Risk Deputy | Link