Dinner: best served with a side of connection

Whether it is a home cooked meal at the holidays, or that hot dog at your first baseball game of the season, food, and the way we gather around it, is a key component of how we experience life.

When Bungalow, a company that connects people to the right roommates in great spaces, tasked us with bridging the gap between co-living and community we knew we didn’t need to look further than the distance from the bedroom to the kitchen.

We created the Coast 2 Coast Cook-off, an event designed to cultivate connections between housemates by teaming up in a friendly competition against their neighbors across the country.

Participating houses were provided with meal supplies, beverages (for those over 21) and utensils thanks to event sponsor Blue Apron. Teams could also win points for roommate trivia and full house participation, while losing points for things like digital distractions.

Local Bungalow community managers kept point tallies, and learned fun facts about their residents along the way. It’s a pretty great day when you receive event reports saying “I was actually able to watch (the residents) become friends.”

After the night-of points were tallied, the event opened up to the broader community, where Bungalow followers had the chance to vote on which team had the best meal presentation via Instagram. Sometimes a winner is too close to call, so both teams were awarded with a month long Blue Apron subscription to help them continue enjoying meals together as a home.

Coast 2 Coast Cook-off kicked off a lasting relationship for Bungalow and Blue Apron, and what became many roommate dinners in homes across the country.

A famous chef once said, "Cooking is all about people. Food is maybe the only universal thing that really has the power to bring everyone together. No matter what culture, everywhere around the world, people eat together." Whether we are coming together physically in the future, or virtually as we safely social distance, here are a few ways you can engage your community by breaking bread:

Make it a competition

Who doesn’t love a little friendly competition, even if it is against yourself? Can you complete the meal in the amount of time allotted? Who has the best plate presentation? Who set off the fire alarm? You can always reward the winner with something fun… or yummy.

Turn off the digital distractions

We are all guilty of it - the unconscious scrolling or the pavlovian reaction to the email buzz. Try to let go and allow the present in. Try documenting with photos to share later, a little airplane mode can do us all some good.

Set up expectations in advance

How will you be connecting? What are you making? Who is involved? Here is a good guide to getting started, especially if you are going virtual.

Learn something new

Many of the world’s best chefs have put easy, do-it-yourself at home tutorials on the web. Choose one of these to follow along and learn to make something new. We recommend this delicious lasagna by “Salt Fat Acid Heat” author Samin Nosrat as a delicious place to start. The NYT Virtual Dinner party thought so too.

Make it fun

Whether you are going virtual with a themed zoom background, or in person with some killer aprons don’t be afraid to embrace your inner chef.

Interested in how Grae can help with digital or live experiences? Drop us a line.