Coeur de Cuisine 2017

As many of you know, this year we are trying to reinvent COEUR just a little bit so it is a little less time consuming and a lot more fun. We’ve tried to do this by overloading the subcommittees with a lot of volunteers, so as the phrase goes - many hands lighten the load. You should be impressed by your club seeing how many members have joined a subcommittee. Now COEUR has roughly two phases, “roughly” because as we know there are always small exceptions to the rule. But one is what might be called the preparation phase and the other is the execution phase.

Right now we are in the preparation phase and the five sub committees actively working in this phase are - Chefs (Erika Schwarm), Beer and Wine (Keith Richenbacher), Marketing (Dick Daniels), Silent Auction (Dan Sundquist) and Sponsors (Christine Montan.) Those sub committees represent well over 50 member of the club under this new structure working for COEUR.

As you can imagine with anything new, we’ve had early success in some areas and later engagement in others. The good news is that all the sub committees are engaged and working on a timeline that will ensure success for our COEUR event.

Also as we refine this new structure, one of the questions we ask is how can we make it simpler. For those who have worked on COEUR in the past, we know that some of the same lessons are learned each year. So we are also trying to capture each step of the process so the “new” guy doesn’t have to struggle learning the process. One of the other things we are trying to do is look at better efficiencies. For example, Erika and Keith are working on the right combination of food and beverage vendors along with the best set up. Now that may not seem like much, but to the new VP who may not have any experience in this particular part of COEUR it is one less thing to worry about and those two committees represent 25 volunteers who are gaining that “corporate” knowledge vice the one or two in the past.

To all of the volunteers, I want to thank you again. This is really an important event for the club and generates the revenue for all of our charitable giving. Your support is not only appreciated by your fellow club members but all the lives our outreach impacts.

Vice-President Paul McNamara, Rotary Club of Escondido