It’s the season of preparing outdoor corporate events. It’s time to surprise guests and employees with cool interactives, installations and thoughtful food presentation. In our experience, the “right” catering enhances the attendee experience to the sky and builds loyalty. How to approach this issue is in another author’s column.
Let’s look at a few possible options.
Festivals, picnics and raves – street food style
Corporate parties in festival style, picnics or raves are an open space, a spirit of freedom, drive, crazy installations and contests, separate stylized zones for relaxation. The things that “millennials” and “gamblers” love and are now consumed with interest and pleasure by “X’s” as well.
In our experience, variety, the effect of participation and involvement in the cooking gives the stylization of “street food,” for example:
- hot dogs on an open fire.
- “1000 and 1 kinds of shawarma”
- pizza (at corporate parties it has become fashionable to cook in an oven over a live fire)
- kebabs and grilled vegetables,
- popcorn and cotton candy, “stations” with ice cream and much more.
Be sure to have a summer bar. Make unforgettable smoothies and lemonades, “pumping” them with corporate and industry identity!
The event contractors and catering services that work with them are sure to get creative here, too. Try to think up something new with the catering, surprise the participants of the corporate party and next time you will not go back to the “boring” serving!
Conceptual event and “hearty cuisine”
What if you have an outdoor venue, a conceptual event (a summer version of “Oktoberfest”? why not) and require “people’s nourishing cuisine”? Only “street food” is not enough – the concept of the event amplify stylized for the event cuisine:
- kebabs transformed into sausages and mini-cottages,
- Serving is done with 50-centimeter aromatic plates – create a visual volume and variety.
- add design to “folk” side dishes (stewed cabbage, baked potatoes)
- use original sauces of at least 15 varieties
- Long live knuckles, shanks, and large “folk exotics” with unconventional serving.
From the preparation of dishes made show in the concept of the event – it “winds up” the guests and participants with smells, sight and action.
A typical mistake is a lack of coordination between the concept and catering
Remember that if the concept and catering are created separately, they will weaken the effect of the event – their inconsistency will play against the customer.
Example. For a corporate party in the style of “Italian party” a standard buffet (“European”) is ordered. Boring? Yes. Savings in the budget? No.
What to do to remedy the situation?
Gather information about Italian open parties – there’s no smell of a standard buffet. Photos and clips of the celebrations will give you the right associations: “family,” “friendship,” “home” … And it looks great and incredibly delicious. Even the bread.
You generate ideas, fit into the concept of the event, and only then adjust to the budget – if you do an interesting event, it will be interesting and inspiring from start to finish!
