5 steps to hosting Play With Your Food meals
Add a half-step if you'd like to apply for funding
Step 1: Register on OpenSeat
If you haven’t already, register on OpenSeat in order to create a Play With Your Food meal event.
If two (or more) people are co-hosting a Play With Your Food meal, then each person should register. If you are hosting as a representative from an organisation, we still prefer that you use your personal name for your profile — you can then mention your organisational affiliation in the bio.
Complete your profile with some biographical details, upload a profile picture, and include any social media links to show prospective guests who you are. These details are useful whether you are hosting or attending a meals (as a guest) — so make sure to provide sufficient details of who you are!
Step 1.5: Apply for funding (Optional)
Funding for a limited number of Play With Your Food hosts is accessible via the ChangeX platform: applications go live from 21 July 2023. See the ChangeX page for more details. If you successfully receive funding from ChangeX, you can decide to put this all towards one meal event, or to subsidise costs for multiple meals — it's up to you!
Step 2: Meet with us and order your hosting package
If you have successfully received funding from ChangeX, we will set up a meeting with you. We will send you a fully-customised Play With Your Food hosting package (including all the items below) to use for hosting your meal.
If your meal is self-funded or funded by a third party, please contact us to discuss your creative vision for parent-child hospitality and the event(s) you have planned. For self-funded hosts, you are welcome to order any of the items below:
A guidelines document for planning Play With Your Food meals
A set of prompt cards with conversation topics and table games
A set of airlaid napkins with customisable prompts for play or conversation
A QR code rubber stamp with a URL of your choosing to be used on napkins & paper table runner
OpenSeat has a growing database of local venues and caterers around the major cities of South Africa should you need our help to find them, and can assist in smoothing out event creation on our platform and how to effectively spread word about your meal.
Step 3: Create your meal event through OpenSeat
After discussing your vision with us, use our Play With Your Food guidelines document as a creative springboard to create your own version of the Play With Your Food idea.
We encourage you to send us a draft event description and title before you start accepting any guests, so that we can provide some suggestions and edits.
Once you have clarified what you are doing, create a new event in OpenSeat by selecting the ‘Host a meal’ option (you need to be logged in). Select ‘Public’ meal. Insert the event’s title and description, and include all the other important details: the date, venue, the target age/ability range of children, the play media involved, the food and the general theme (if you have one). You should ask prospective guests to contact you regarding their dietary requirements. The more detail the better.
Step 4: Spread the word and manage your guestlist
For any meals hosted through OpenSeat, you will receive a notification when a guest requests a seat (or multiple seats) at your table. Parents or caregivers who request seats will add children's names to their booking. The OpenSeat dashboard takes the struggle out of managing the guestlist: you can always accept or reject requests for seats, giving you control over who comes to your event. As a host, you have responsibility in gatekeeping who attends, so bear this in mind — especially if an individual adult requests a seat (without including any details of children who will be attending with them).
Post about your event on social media, ideally two weeks before you host it, and send a link to the event to anyone who you think might be interested in attending. Ask friends in your community to do the same in their social networks.
We find that the initial guests are people who know you, and then as soon as others see that people are attending, they will join too! Once you’ve posted on your preferred social media channels, let us know and our team will strive to release an Instagram post 5-7 days beforehand to help fill up the remaining open seats. Remember to tag us on social media using ‘openseatlife’ and ‘playwithyourfood’
Step 5: Host your meal, debrief, and repeat
Having developed a plan for the meal, organised the logistics, and found guests for your seats, the day arrives: you now get to host the meal. Document it as best you can within privacy regulations (especially considering children are involved), using the napkins in the hosting package to capture some of the experience through text and picture. If you would like your guests to review their experience of hospitality, you can ask them to scan your personalised QR code (stamped on napkins or the table runner) at the end of the meal, so as to fill out a questionnaire.
After your meal has occurred, you will have mastered the use of the OpenSeat platform and have some insights into the dynamics of organising venues and catering, as well as curating both parents’ and children’s experiences of table hospitality, conversation, and play.
If funding was available for this idea on ChangeX and you successfully completed your 30 Day Challenge, your first meal will receive funding for catering and venue fees; any subsequent Play With Your Food meals that you host will have to be self-funded. To do this, you can charge guests to subsidise the costs that go into providing hospitality, or approach a third-party funder to subsidise your costs.
Each subsequent event will allow you to improve your ability to be a dynamic and effective host of Play With Your Food meals, helping you facilitate playful and meaningful connections between parents and children in your community.