2013 - May 4, Mochi and Friends Dessert Cafe

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Revision as of 08:11, 28 May 2013

Event Captains

• Norman and Kim

Event Description

The aim of Mochi and Friends was to create a classy dessert cafe environment where people could enjoy fancy desserts, socialize, and meet the ATS exec. The actual event featured several deserts and drinks: sushi mochi, green tea cheesecake, egg/fruit tarts, Emily (fruit custard) tarts, shaved ice, milk tea, aloe juice, and mixed fruit drinks. Guests could attend the event for free, but they were limited to 3 servings of dessert/drinks each, or 4 if they attended with a big or little. Milk tea was considered "free". Entertainment included karaoke, mahjong, and Bang!

Attendance

Estimated attendance was around 100 persons.

Menu

Desserts

Sushi Mochi

Green Tea Cheesecake

Egg/Fruit Tarts

Shaved Ice

Emily Fruit Tarts

Drinks

Milk Tea

• 2 pots of milk tea, with the usual recipe (60 bags of tea and 2 cans of condensed milk each)
• Ran out fairly slowly

Aloe Juice

• A couple bottles of aloe

Arbitrary Kim Fruit Drink

• Ingredients: Pineapple juice, seltzer water, limeade, cherry-pomegranate grenadine, sugar, ice, mint leaves
• Fill the cup halfway with ice, pour a equal measures of pineapple juice, limeade, and seltzer. Mix the grenadine with a little bit of sugar to make the syrup thicker, and carefully pour a small amount into the glass, so that the red syrup sinks to the bottom instead of mixing with the drink. Add a mint leaf on top as decoration.
• The point of the drink is pretty much to look good, so you should make it in a clear cup

Decorations and Venue

The event was held at McCormick country kitchen on Saturday, May 4th from 8-10.

Decor included:

• The large Taiwan flag as a banner on the back wall
• Leftover white tablecloths from S2T were used to cover the tables
• The vases from Lunar New Year were placed on tables and filled with pocky
• Steph Yu worked on stringing lanterns with tea lights from the kitchen area to the emergency exit, and making leveled cardboard dessert display stands, which were covered in the red tablecloths from LNY
• Each table had printed menus

Entertainment

Notes

Budget

• The event was fully funded at $350. The money was spent on food, drinks, and plates/utensils, with approximately $80 leftover. The budget breakdown is as follows:
  • Square Plastic Plates - $50
  • Clear Plastic Cups - $23
  • Bao Bao Fruit/Egg Tarts - $50
  • Shaws - $70???
  • Cmart - ????
  • Lotte (Matcha Powder) - $12

Publicity

• The original estimated and target audience size was around 40 people. Due to the large number of end of semester events, we decided to pub harder to make up for lost attendance, and had quite a large turnout.
• Postering locations were the Infinite, Student Center, several dorms (including McCormick, Maseeh, Next, and East Campus), Stata, and Building 66.
• Several emails were sent to the ats mailing list, and another dorm-wide email was sent the morning of the event.
• We also created a facebook event page.

Logistics

• Reservation issues this year - lesson learned: start emailing way ahead of time at LEAST two weeks.
  • We couldn't get Tim the Beaver this year because another group had already reserved the costume
  • The Girls Scouts had already reserved one table, in front of 32-124 where a lot of the outlets are, so we had to cut back on grilled foods that need appliances
  • NOTE: It would be really good to set up in-person meetings with these contacts. Email turned out to be really unreliable - I wouldn't get a response for maybe a week. Make sure when you do send an email to include EVERYTHING you want to ask to minimize the number of emails you send in total. I had to ask Lianne over three times about timing issues before she finally answered my question. (She would reply to other questions in her email and ignore that one). On many occasions, I would email someone and get one of those automatic "will be out of the office for the next week" replies.

• Reserving Stata
  • Fill out the "Student Space Application." Also contact Lianne directly about reserving the space.
  • Need to fill out an official event description on the MIT event calendar because we get funding
  • In addition to reserving the space, you need to register the event. Go to the Events and Information Center (7-121) to pickup a registration form. There are a lot of carbon copies that you need to get signed by CAC, SAO, the campus police - instructions on the form are really clear.

• Meeting with Campus Dining - we met with Tom Lapsley, who took the meeting more as "what do you need from me" instead of "we need your approval so you know we won't kill anyone"
  • Asked for - tablecloths, serving utensils, ice. Tablecloths were super nice!
  • Tom says he has a good relations with Sodexo
  • He provided ice from Forbes Cafe - Kerrianne Donnelly (kdonn@mit.edu) was the one to talk to the day of.

• TechCASH Machine
  • Reserve the TechCASH machine ASAP, much earlier than two weeks before.
  • The first 2 days are free and day 3 on is 5.00 per day. If you use sign-in sheets, the file when processed is a 5.00 fee.

• Publicity
  • Every student group gets the equivalent of one full page ad in the Tech each year. We used it all for STT. (http://web.mit.edu/asa/publicity/tech-ads.html)
  • Infinite Wings: get one of those little side boards that jut out in the infinite. Reservations are available and will be managed on a first-come, first-serve basis. Contact Gayle Gallagher (gayle@mit.edu) for an application.
  • Giant CAC boards - applications start in December!
  • Wanted to get one of the Lobby 7 kiosks but apparently they're broken?

• Other Logistics
  • Lianne got us nice easels and helped us contact the electricity people. Send her the layout plans. She'll want to know how many easels we want, what appliance wattages are
    • CAC had the tables and chairs set up per our layout - no charges for CAC event support
  • We ended up needing a ladder to set up the wishing tree, so keep that in mind

Volunteers

Non-food

Decorations