Cholent Strategy - an interest group initiative

There has been some changes implemented in the meat allocation formula used for cholent meat purchases. Under the new formula the amount of meet in shul's cholent has been reduced from previous range of 4 to 8 pounds to a new lower range of 3 to 4 pounds. Health hazards of cholent have been known for many years. However, change in meet allocation has been implemented not as a result of a health concern, but as a result of broader initiative to conserve financial resources of the shul.

One more thing that is important to keep in mind is that cholent is not paid for by community funds, but is entirely paid for by a certain community member. Members should be free to decide to increase or lower their contribution levels and we can not mandate for the person to contribute at the same level, especially if there are ways to make the cholent cost less.

There are different aspects in making a policy decision on this subject. Here they are in no particular order:
1 . The Cost
The cost of preparing meat cholent is roughly as follows:
$40 for the meat
$2 Onions
$4 Premium Potatoes
$1 Stake Sauce
$12 two kishkes
$2 Barley
$2 Other beans
$4 Sweet potatoes
$7 Other
Which comes out to about $70-80.

Replacing meat with herring would lower that cost by $7-10. Another option is going Parve (which also means low-protein) and adjuts the recipie to a high-end parve edition that attempts to use good taste to compensate for the lack of meat or fish. Parve edition could easily reduce the cost by $30 per week ($1,500 per year).

2 . Competitiveness to attract and retain people attending
It would be very far fetched to think that anyone would pick their shul affiliation based on cholent only. However availability of premium cholent can have an important place in helping one to make a decision on which organization to attend on Shabbos. This becomes especially important in the competitive shul environment, which Touhy ave. has become.

3. The Benefit To Community
It is nice to eat nice hot and yummy cholent on Sabbath. It is not presence of meat or herring that is really important, it is the fact that the food is tasty. Meat and fish have gained popularity amongst humans as a sure and easy route to making your food taste good. However, theoretically it might be possible to achieve premium taste without the use of these (expensive) ingridients.

So here are the options:

1. Do nothing and continue making meat cholent
2. Lower meat content to save cost
   
3. Replace meat with parve + herring
4. Attempt to make a superrior parve cholent, offer meat or herring as an option to sponsors for an additional fee.

I have had a pleasure of eating a premium parve cholent @ Gertzberg's house. This has happened twice on separate Shabothes. I propose try switching to Premium Parve!

I think this reasonably, addresses all of the aforementioned concerns. However if you find faults in my reasoning or assumpations, or have other simple and inexpensive solutions that also do not require much additional effort, please post here and we will discuss it before board comes to session, so we can come to the board with a reasonable proposal as involved and concerned shul members.