spaghetti dinner

[Pamela]

My team woudl like to run a spaghetti dinner as a fundraiser, (complete with robo-waiter for VIP tables ), and were wonderign if any other teams have run a spaghetti dinner, if you have could you lend my team some expertise? It would be greatly appreciated since we have never doen a fundraiser of this sort! Thanks, you can contact me at Soccagirl3@aol.com

[Wayne C.]

We haven't used a robot to serve pasta but we once used a robot to disperse cans of soda at a technology fair. We made a vertical chute on the back of the bot so every time we raised and lowered the central tower it would pop out one can of soda in a nice arc about 3 feet into the hands of the waiting spectators. All worked well until the spring in the mechanism twisted a bit and a half dozen cans shot out about 15 feet in the air and exploded all over the floor. The crowd went wild. We don't do that anymore!

We learned robots and soda don't mix- good luck with your pasta. Bring lots of towels.

WC

[Shelley_delphi chick]

That had to be a sight!!!!


Shelley

[patrickrd]

Our team ran a spheghetti dinner in the spring, and we are planning to have another one this upcoming spring. I wasn't able to attend last year (I had an exam the same evening) but basically, we just sold as many tickets as possible. Scheduling some public robot demos beforehand is a good idea so you can sell tickets to people who come to look at your robot. During the actual dinner, we demoed our robot and had students give a presentation of what the team is about.

Patrick

[Christina]

I know my team had a spaghetti dinner last year...well, sorry, my old team (271). They charged $10 a ticket...and I think it went pretty well. I unfortunately couldn't attend (though I don't remember the reason off hand). They just tried to get as many people to attend...especially family members of the member of the team.

~Christina

[GregT]

I wasn't able to attend last year (I had an exam the same evening) ]

Nice excuse.

[Penny]

Pamela --

Beach Bot has done a spaghetti dinner for the past 3 years. Last year we earned $2000 from it -- not too bad for a team with only 12 students!

Our dinner this year is Monday, November 5 -- want to come? We're a church-sponsored school, so we hold the dinner in the church's main auditorium. This year we are charging $3 for children under 10 and $6 for everyone else. We try to keep prices reasonable because we have a lot of large families and single parent families in our church. We're also trying a special family package of $24.00 this year.

Local restaurants donate most of the food, so almost all of the ticket price is profit. Each family provides home-baked desserts to cap off the evening. Last year we earned additional money by raffling off a donated DirecTV satellite system. This year we weren't able to locate a nice prize to raffle.

One year when Beach Bot had a basket, we did have the robot bringing bread to the tables. We usually have a short demo, show some videotape footage of previous competitions, and have team promotional literature on the tables. We serve continously from 6:00 to 8:30, so we try to fill each space at least 2 times.

It's been a great money-maker for us; hope it works for you too!

Penny Ross
Team #330