Signups for mealplan happen at the beginning of each quarter. If you're on our social mailing list, pika-social@mit.edu, the signup form will be sent to you then. If you are not on the list and/or want to join mid-quarter; email yfnkm@mit.edu to sign up.
Short answer: anybody! pika's mealplan is open to residents and non-residents alike. Non-resident membership is not at all unusual; the mealplan is often only half residents! Non-MIT students and even non-students can also join--we usually have a few of them around as well.
Mealplan is typically around $110 per quarter, which comes out to just a couple dollars per meal.
pika offers two mealplan options:
Both plans are the same price; the only difference is frequency of kitchen duty. All residents have full mealplan included in rent. Non-residents typically choose half mealplan.
Mealplan members can either cook or clean. Kitchen duties are done in pairs or triples and usually accompanied by music through our kitchen stereo system, but we pretend it's work anyway.
Part of cooking for pika is making sure other pikans are healthy. All our meals have vegetables and protein. We always have vegan options, including vegan protein, and food that fits within whatever other dietary restrictions mealplanners for that particular quarter have. It's standard to provide various dinner dishes with different ingredients as a courtesy to mealplanners with strong preferences.
If you're going to be late for dinner, put in a request to lates.pikans.org and the cooks will save you a take-home box!
Sometimes, pikans and mealplanners use pika's kitchen and house groceries to make extra things, usually baked goods. As long as the results are shared with the house, and the dishes are cleaned afterwards, this is totally OK!