I don't know about you, but I always love an excuse to get together with friends and eat fabulous food! Creating a dinner club for a group of friends is the perfect way to make it happen! There really are no rules to a "dinner club," but it could be helpful to have a few tips on how to get it started. This past year I was invited to join a dinner club and it's been such a fun experience! Let me start by giving you a few easy steps to consider, while I also share a few details about the dinner club I'm a part of.
Dinner Club Dynamics
- Who is going to be a part of the club and will it have a name?
- When will we meet?
- Who will host the event?
- What's the responsibility of each member?
- Are there any rules?
- Get the PARTY started!
This basic outline will help you consider all the main elements that need to be decided upon when establishing your dinner club. I'm going to use this same outline to give you the details on the dinner club that I am a part of and then a few final thoughts.
The dinner club I joined is made up of 12 ladies because we decided to meet once a month for the entire year. We went with a fun name and called ourselves, "The Real Housewives of Lancaster County." Overused? Maybe...but it's our club and we will name it what we want to. And you should too!
We meet the second Thursday of each month and each lady takes a turn hosting the event in her home. The monthly hostess gets to decide the theme of the dinner, and provides the main course and wine. The other members bring a dish that coordinates with the theme to share with the rest of the group.
The only rules we set were that if you committed to be a part of the dinner club you did your very
best to attend all of the events. We also required that all of the dishes be made personally, by each person...no stopping by the grocery store to pick up a bag of chips or some macaroni salad from the deli. So our dinner club also became kind of a cooking club, which was a little intimidating to me because cooking is not one of my strong points, but I love that it has stretched me to try new recipes and "spread my wings" in the kitchen as well. We deemed our dinner club the "no judgment zone" and knew that some dishes would be surprisingly fabulous and others would be complete fails, which honestly adds to the fun.
We are 7 months into our year of dinner club gatherings and it has been a fantastic experience. We've enjoyed themes that have included comfort foods, Mediterranean, aphrodisiacs, wrapped & rolled, Cinco de Mayo and farm to table. Each one is unique because we are in a different member's home, with a specific theme, but one thing that doesn't change is our fabulous group of ladies and all the fun we have the second Thursday of each month!
There are so many other ways you could design your dinner club. Maybe you restaurant hop or order takeout rather than cooking, or maybe your dinner club is made up of couples, co-workers, neighbors, the list could go on and on. Truly there are no "rules" except to have fun and create memories with friends around a table. So let's do dinner...and get the party started!
