How to Start a Supper Club with Your Friends

Starting a supper club with your friends is a great way to make sure you get some regular quality time in. What better way to connect than over delicious food? I started my first supper club when I lived in Los Angeles several year ago. We really looked forward to it every month. It was always exciting to pick the next month’s theme. But then I moved back to Atlanta for work. I didn’t regret my decision, but I missed my supper club. Over time I developed friendships with fellow foodies that I thought would be a great group for a new supper club.

If you and your friends love getting in the kitchen and trying new foods, I think starting your own super club will be a fun way to connect and strengthen your bonds. You don’t need to be the best cook in the world to start your own supper club. It’s about spending quality time together and sharing your unique food creations. The process also doesn’t need to be laborious or time consuming. With a little prep and organization, you can start your very own supper club and effortlessly keep it going. Read on for the step by step process.

Step 1- Assemble Your Crew

You can’t have a supper club without participants. Ideally I would recommend a group of 5-8 people. You’ll learn that there are times not everyone will be available to participate and that’s ok. As long as you have at least 4 people that can commit, you will be good to go. I have found that the best way to manage the group and logistics of it all is to create a private Facebook group. Assign a person or two to be admins who will coordinate and lead communication. In my group, this happens to be me.

Step 2- Collect Themes

Ask everyone to submit a few different themes or cuisines. Encourage them to be creative! There are no wrong submissions here. An example of some supper club themes we have done in the past or have submitted are:

• Italian
• Rainbow (each person got assigned a color)
• Food Inspired by Movies
• Latin Cuisine
• Gourmet Junk Food
• Korean
• Last Meal
• Backyard BBQ

Keep a list of the submitted themes in a Word Document or Excel file. You will access this list during the planning process of each supper club.

Step 3- Select a Host and a Date

To not burden any one person in the group, we have a different host each time. The host rotates with each meet up to be fair to all in the group. Sometimes someone will volunteer to host and the dates we offer to meet are based on their availability. Other times, we determine a date and a host is selected based on who is available.

My supper club tries to meet monthly, but you can determine how regularly your group would like to meet. You will want to find a date when most, if not all, of your group is available to meet. There are number of ways you can determine the best date. However, since you have created a Facebook group, you can easily do so through a Facebook Poll. Everyone will vote on the date or dates that work best for them and the date with the most vote wins. Just because it is called supper club doesn’t mean it needs to be a nighttime affair. If a weekend afternoon works best, by all means, go for it!

Step 4- Choose a Theme and a Course

After you determine who is hosting and when you will be meeting, it’s time to choose a theme and what course everyone will be assigned. In my first supper club we weren’t very fancy with our process. We literally had all the themes written on pieces of paper and placed them in a sandwich bag. We would randomly draw a theme from the bag and that was that. In my current group, I am a little more hi-tech. I upload all of the themes to a site like Random Name Picker and let their system do the work. Either way, we like the idea of randomly selecting a theme because it creates an element of surprise and excitement.

Once you have locked down a theme, you want to assign courses. It’s no fun if everyone brings a side dish, ya know? After announcing the theme, I usually give everyone an opportunity to claim the course they want. The list of courses we choose from tend to be:

• Cocktail/Beverage
• Appetizer
• Soup/Salad
• Entrée
• Side Dish
• Dessert

Depending on the size of the group, a person may do two (i.e. entrée and cocktail). Or if it is a larger group, we may have 2 people on appetizers or sides. There are times where the theme doesn’t make sense to do courses or it may be too much of a challenge so you can ditch the whole assignment of courses and cook what you please.

Step 5- Cook, Eat & Be Merry!

At this point, you are the at the fun part. Each person will brainstorm what their dish will be and cook it to be served to the group. My supper club likes the intrigue of keeping our dishes a surprise. We might drop a hint or two, but the dish is usually revealed when we actually meet up. We always arrive so excited to see everyone’s creations and are even more excited to be able to try them.

Creating and maintaining a supper club should not be a daunting process or something you dread organizing each month. You want this to be fun- something you enjoy doing with your friends. That being said, this is just a guideline of how I started and continue to manage mine. Remember this is YOUR supper club. Create it and manage it in a way that makes sense for you and your group. However you decide to run it, don’t forget to enjoy the process of creating, enjoy the food and enjoy the beautiful company!