We are also talking about doing a Spaghetti dinner for a spring community event. I love the idea of divying up the parts of meal to different grades. Do you have peple RSVP? Also, how do you cover your janitor fees if you don't charge?
We did ours as a fundraiser and found a local pizza parlor that was willing to provide the food at cost. This was huge for us, as we aren't allowed to use our cafeteria's kitchen. We also had a bake sale, silent auction, raffle and kids' games. We sold the dinner tickets in advance so we'd have an idea how many people to expect—they were $1 cheaper in advance than buying at the door.
We do a spaghetti dinner every year and it's a blast. One thing we found to be key is to have people rsvp. We recently moved to giving people the option to rsvp via Facebook and it has worked out well.. We break out what people do by grade... it is our tradition to have the 6th grade families do the spaghetti & sauce. It is the only thing we make at the school. They have huge pots we can use. K brings drinks, Grade 1 brings garlic bread, grade 2 brings salads, grade 3 brings drinks, grade 4 brings paper goods and grade 5 does the invitations. The room parents for each grade sends out the call for help and coordinates. We find that breaking it out specifically like this helps the response and kind of creates some competition. No grade wants to be the grade that doesn't come through. Hope this helps. Have fun : )
I'm working on the same thing and still haven't worked out all the details, although we are currently selling tickets and the event is less then a week away!
If you have some specific questions I might be able to provide information based on the recent experience.
