Meal Delivery

Just the other day I was getting ready to send out an email to organize meal delivery for a friend who is having a baby.  I was going to go about it the way I have in the past, which was to print out my own calendar.  Ask each person to contact me to sign up for a day, and keep everyone posted with multiple emails.  But then I had an idea....why don't I see if anyone has come up with a free online calendar that would make it simple to give everyone the information, dates needed, food preferences, allergies, etc all in one place.

I decided to do a Google search for 'Free Meal Delivery Calendars' and I checked out several.  I originally signed up with a different site, but once I had gone through the entire process, I discovered that although it was free, it would require each person who wanted to sign up for a meal to create an account (for marketing purposes no doubt).  I quickly scrapped this site and moved on to another.

I ended up using the site http://www.takethemameal.com which I've discovered to be relatively simple for both the site administrator and those wanting to provide a meal.  Friends can just click on a link that you send them, which takes them directly to the page regarding the person you are serving, and click 'take' to sign up for a date.  With a quick glance they can see what others are bringing so that the recipient of the meals doesn't receive spaghetti 4 days in a row.

You are also able to print out the schedule and the recipient can see what is scheduled to come as well as having easy access to phone numbers and email addresses should they need to cancel a meal or make changes for any reason.

So far this has worked beautifully!

Here is a sample schedule:

Next time you have a friend or family member who is having surgery, welcoming a new baby, or in need of meals for any reason....I'd suggest trying out this website.  It's never been so easy to coordinate meal delivery!

If anyone is interested I'd be happy to share how I made the email notification that I used.  I didn't use the site's standard notification email (surprise, surprise).  I created an email in Microsoft Publisher and emailed it as well as attaching it as a .pdf file.  I did this so that I could use the colors of the nursery, photos of my friend, her ultrasound photo, and a picture of a painting that her daughter had painted for the baby's room.  It felt more personal to me with these added items.  This is something that I enjoy doing and if I didn't, I would have happily used the email that is provided by the website itself to notify the friends and family of the meal schedule. (Which is perfectly adequate.)

Here is what my email looked like:

If anyone has any sites that they have used or found helpful in coordinating assistance for other people or families, I'd love to hear what they are!  You're comments are welcome and appreciated!