Do You Know a Good Website for Coordinating Meals?

We need one. Well, we think we do. Here's the thing: We're coordinating meals for a moms group we're part of, but is setting up an account at a website and inviting people to log in to choose a date really that much easier than a good old mass email (or a Google document)? Do any of you have a meal coordinating website you love?

Here are a few that we've found:

• Meal Baby, which has the most modern and user-friendly, in our opinion. You choose dates on a calendar (rather than just writing in "August 2nd") and can also donate to families in need through the site.
• Take Them a Meal, which has a place to write dietary restrictions and instructions but pretty much looks like a standard spreadsheet.
• Care Calendar has buttons across the top of the calendar for maps, driving directions, contact the coordinator, send the recipient a message, etc.
• Food Tidings. We can't see much about this one without registering. Anyone used it?

The pros of these sites are that all of the information is in one place. The coordinator isn't constantly answering emails about the mom's food preferences or telling someone, again, where she lives. And you don't get caught up in long email threads when people reply all to an initial message.

However, we're not sure all the bells and whistles of these sites are necessary. (And people are going to email you with questions regardless. How about: "Can you tell me again how to log in to that website you sent?")

What's your opinion? And do you have any other sites to suggest? We'd love to know about them.

Comments (8)

google wave, is really a great application for this, it's not that much different than email, it's free, and it works.

Food tidings is great; we use it at our church to coordinate meals for new mothers. You can list the family, their food preferences, how many each meal needs to feed, drop-off location, drop-off time, etc. And all the personal information like address and phone number is kept private until you sign up to actually bring a meal.

Here's a screengrab of the meal coordinating page: http://bit.ly/cUwOx1

I would have laughed if you proposed needing a site like this before last week, BUT, last week I delivered a meal to a recently-babied-up friend after registering for my day on Meal Baby.

The best part was the reminder one day before. I'd COMPLETELY forgotten that I'd signed up for a day, but it gave me plenty of time.

I'd say Google Calendar would work just fine, though.

Holy Cow do I wish I'd known about this 2 months ago. We've got a 2 month old and a 16 month old and I really could have used some food help those first few weeks. What an amazing idea.

google calendar plus google doc link in initial email ... easy

we use lotsahelpinghands.com which helps with not just meal planning, but everything else that needs to be covered when someone is ill such as childcare, rides, housekeeping, etc. It has been a lifesaver to me.

I am with coffeejitters. We have used lotsahelpinghands.com many times and were able to help a very young widow with 3 children, a friend who lost her baby, and one who had breast cancer. We set up meals, lawn mowing, childcare, errands, rides for kids, house cleaning and whatever they needed. Very private and efficient.

http://www.lotsahelpinghands.com/

Yeah, I've also used Lotsa Helping Hands. It's useful because it makes it really easy to sign up for a task, but it's one more thing to remember to log in to and keep track of instead of something you can see on your regular calendar, so my feelings are mixed!