F&B Council meeting December 1

Present: Kirby, Val, Jon Hodde, Melissa, Chuck, Rob Corey, Rob Pieper, Rebecca Pena, Kim Carson, Nancy Richard -- Bianca Bismark's assistant at Dunraven at the Estes Park Resort

Here's a recap of our conversation and action items at the bottom. Please comment on this post if you have any ideas to add or encouragement for the team.

Jonathan Hodde on supply chain. Rebecca on shopping nicer. Kirby asked if there is anyone we should be campaigning with? Problem same with legislators and private sector alike. Will be interesting to see what happens when international travel opens us. The Chamber will keep this as a key topic with legislators and advocates.

Kirby on Comp Plan. www.engageestes.org. Workshop in a box in January for a conversation focused on F&B. Timing? Val says morning. Most concur 9 a.m.

Where can we grow?

• Industry night at Rock Cut in the winter.

• Share restaurant info from the Tourism Network of Chambers.

• Communications. We have 66 F&B members we can contact on supply needs and last minute staffing. The Restaurant Management group on Facebook is not heavily used. Donna will investigate the group texting app and rules of engagement through ChamberMaster. Do we share info on Facebook Group , Chamber blog or Member Information Center? 

• Melissa will feed Donna information from the Colorado Restaurant Association that we can share on whatever forum we land on.

What are the top problems we need to solve as a group?

• Disaster communications and best practices

• Holiday communications that will serve locals and visitors, e.g. Who is open on Thanksgiving? Christmas? New Year’s Eve?

• Forum for sharing information with ESL Group. The app that is designed for the Hispanic community is called Chamba - it is in Spanish, and is designed to be a Craigslist type of app (or what Craigslist used to be) for service workers for F&B and accommodations workers. [Thanks, Val.}

• Solve staffing gaps through volunteer pool -- someone who can come in and host for a couple of hours, roll silverware, load the dishwasher, etc. Need temporary gap fills for staff on vacation, not necessarily a job sharing program.

• Talk with VEP about our capacity to handle more guests. Usually slow in November and nobody is slow now.

How often would you like to meet and how?

• Mornings are best, early in the week

Action Items

• Next meeting TBD in January on the Comp Plan Workshop.

• FYI about a J1 Host webinar Jan 11 with InterExchange and GeoVision

• We’ve created a Facebook Group for those who it serves. Join here. Not every member of the team has time for Facebook, so this won’t catch everyone but when we have important information to share, we will send a text with a link to the Facebook group so you can get what you need faster.

• We’ve created an F&B folder in the Member Information Center Resources. If you don’t know how to access that MIC, contact admin@esteschamber.org.