How to set a date for a barbecue - planning with a rain backup date among the candidates
Charcoal / ice / meat / paper plates. For a barbecue, you cannot work out how much of any of these to buy until the headcount settles on a single number. And among the things you buy, fresh food and ice cannot be carried over if the event slips by even 1 day. For an indoor gathering, a moved date only costs you the venue booking, but for an outdoor gathering, the goods move first.
So for outdoor dates, decide “where things go if it rains out” together with the event date before you send anything out. If the backup date is on the candidate list from the start, what the organizer has to decide the day before shrinks to a choice of two: “as planned, or the backup date.”
Put the backup date on the same candidate list
For outdoor gatherings, split candidate dates into 2 kinds, “main” and “backup,” and list them in the same poll. If you ask only about the main date and add a backup date later, you have to collect attendance for the backup date all over again, and on top of that you head into the day without knowing “whether the people who put ○ on the main date are also free on the backup date.”
Listing them is simple: just write the role into the candidate’s name. If you write “6/14 (Sat) main,” “6/15 (Sun) backup,” and “6/21 (Sat) backup 2,” people answering also understand “if the main date is rained out, we move to this date” when they mark ○△×.
There are 3 ways to place a backup date
Where you place the backup date changes whether you protect the venue booking or the attendance rate. Choose according to the nature of the gathering.
| How to place the backup | Venue booking | Attendance | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| The next day (the other day of the same weekend) | Limited to venues you can hold 2 days in a row | Rarely drops. Food you bought can be carried over too | Small groups / when you can secure the venue on consecutive days |
| The same weekday the following week | You have to book again, but open slots are easy to find | With a week's gap, a few people tend to drop out | Large groups / when securing consecutive days is hard |
| Move to a covered area | Make a separate tentative booking for a covered area | Does not drop, since the date does not move | When it doubles as a welcome or farewell party whose date cannot move |
If you can assign 2 days of a three-day weekend to the main and backup dates, both the venue and the participants are easiest to move. Looking at how long weekends line up on the holiday / long weekend calendar before building candidates lets you avoid a setup where “the day after the main date is a weekday and nobody can come.”
Leave the call to cancel to a rule, not a person
The organizer agonizes the day before because the decision rests on the organizer’s own judgment. If you announce in advance what the decision is based on and when it will be made, the organizer only has to read out the rule.
The probability of precipitation published by the Japan Meteorological Agency is defined as the probability of 1 mm or more of rain falling during that time period. It is not a number that expresses how much rain falls or how long it lasts, so where to draw the line of “cancel at X%” is something the organizer has to decide based on the nature of the gathering. Set it lower for a gathering using a charcoal fire, and higher if you have a covered area secured.
Draw one line on the precipitation probability scale and assign where things go in advance
- If it falls left of the line, send out the meeting place and time as is
- If it falls right of the line and 80% of the main date’s attendees answered for the backup date, move it. Treat the backup date answers as the new attendance as is
- If it falls right of the line and backup date answers do not reach 80% of the main date’s, cancel. Stop the shopping and do not collect fees
* If you fix the decision time to a single point such as 18:00, you can answer any earlier inquiries in one line: “We’ll send it to everyone at 18:00”
Count back the barbecue deadline from the shopping day
The deadline for an outdoor gathering is cut from the day you shop for food, not the day you book the venue. The amount of meat and drinks depends only on headcount, and anything you overbuy cannot be carried over to the next day.
- The headcount deadline is 2 days before shopping. If you set the deadline on the morning of the day before, the numbers shift right before shopping and some items run short
- Limit additions after the deadline to “drinks only”. Design it so people who join on the day are absorbed by the on-site shop or things people bring
- Do not set a separate deadline for backup date answers. Collect them at the same time as the main date so they can be used for the decision the day before
- Collect fees only after the event is confirmed to go ahead. If you collect first, you are left with refunds when it is canceled
Ask about gear and food duties together with attendance
At a barbecue, “what actually arrives at the site” decides success as much as who comes. The accident of ending up with 3 sets each of charcoal, fire starters, and tongs, and not a single bag of ice or trash bag, happens when you ask about attendance and duties separately.
If people can see who brings what on the same screen as the poll’s candidates, people who answer that they are coming can find their own duties right there. Use PickDay up to listing candidate dates including the backup date, and add the list of things to bring in the comment field or the invitation. There is no registration step, so you can give the same URL as is to people who only join on the day.
When assigning duties, give heavy and cold items to people near the closest station. Charcoal (heavy) / ice and the cooler box (heavy and melts) / fresh food (needs to stay cold): just having people with short travel times to the site carry these 3 changes how hard the day is.
Write the rain-out message in advance
The last preparation to avoid agonizing at 18:00 the day before is to write the messages ahead of time. If you draft 3 messages, go ahead / move / cancel, on the day you send out the candidate dates, on the night before you only need to swap in the date and send.
The skeleton of a message announcing a move
- Conclusion first (“Because of rain tomorrow, we are moving to the backup date, the 15th (Sun)”)
- The reason in one line (“The 18:00 forecast put the chance of rain above our line”)
- State what does not change (“The meeting place and time are the same”)
- State whether people need to answer (“If you marked ○ for the backup date, we will count you as attending”)
- A way out for people whose plans changed (“If the 15th is difficult, please reply to this message”)
The 4th point is what works best in a message announcing a move. The moment you write “We will take attendance again,” the organizer’s work goes back to square one, and participants’ enthusiasm cools. Collecting backup date answers from the start is also what lets you write that one sentence.
It is also a gathering where same-day absences are hard to predict, so together with systems to prevent last-minute cancellations, it helps to decide an amount of food that still works if fewer people come.