How to Help a Co-Worker and Get PAID!

July 9, 2008 3:07 PM

I have a close work associate who is in the hospital and we, as a team, would like to buy some good, healthy food for him and his family (people are sending them lots of takeout now). Since he is in the ICU, it will probably be for his wife and two boys until he gets out of the hospital. I have two questions: 1) Any recommendations on the best pre-prepared meal delivery or (affordable) home chef in the San Jose, CA area? Kid-friendly a big plus. 2) More importantly, how can I easily collect money from people across the country? Mailing cash and taking credit cards directly won't work. Is there a "Paypal pool" or something?

I have a couple of links for delivery services (in no order):
http://www.souskitchen.com/
http://www.homebistro.com/index.cfm
http://www.cook-sf.com/
http://www.magickitchen.com/

If you have any others to add (or second the ones above), let me know.

posted by JLobster to food & drink (7 comments total)

Assuming that people would trust you with the money (because I don't know you or, more importantly, them), you can take donation through PayPal. They still take their fee, but it's something like 0.30USD + 2.9% of each donation.

That would probably be the easiest way to collect money.
posted by theichibun at 3:15 PM on July 9, 2008

http://www.dropcash.com/ for collecting money. you can set a max amount, do a write up as to why you're collecting the money, and get a URL to easily email out.
posted by nadawi at 3:16 PM on July 9, 2008

dropcash with a handy, clickable link.
posted by nadawi at 3:17 PM on July 9, 2008

Can't answer the delivery services, but definitely if you setup a PayPal account, possibly separate from any other PayPal account you may have, they take credit cards so it should serve as a way to allow others to contribute towards the fund. I'm sure there's other ways that other MeFi members will know of, but, I'm bored, and wanted to try to offer something remotely useful.
posted by hungrysquirrels at 3:17 PM on July 9, 2008

Damn you guys are quick ;) I'll have to look at dropcash myself, never know when these things come in handy.
posted by hungrysquirrels at 3:19 PM on July 9, 2008

I've used Fundable to make international group purchases. You can pay with Paypal or credit card.
posted by clearlydemon at 4:32 PM on July 9, 2008

We recently got several dinners from sous-kitchen. One nice feature was that we could keep the meals in the freezer until the day before we wanted them. The food was pretty good but it will depend on how old the children are. For example, last night we had sesame-ginger beef stir-fry with rice. My children wouldn't have eaten anything but the rice until they were in middle-school.

Another thing that might help with kids is to give her Safeway gift cards and introduce her to shopping Safeway on-line. That way, she won't have to worry about running out of milk or other essentials.
posted by metahawk at 11:04 PM on July 9, 2008