What Your Guests Won't Tell You About Your Event

We write frequently about tips and ideas for entertaining and parties, but today we want to share a great story about a lunch we catered for a multinational corporate client because it illustrates how even in offices people notice the little details of an event and it's the little details that help make people happy when there's anything to do with served food.

In short, what your guests won't tell you about your event NOT having but will notice if you DO have.

A corporate client for which we've catered dinners for the last two years called and asked if we could replace their lunch caterer. Seems our competitor did not create a pleasant lunch EXPERIENCE for them--poor quality food and presentation. Especially offensive, it seems was their placing of bags of potato chips in the lid of a disposable tray pressed into service as a serving tray. Plastic everything, in fact--even for the VIPS who travel from out of town for these meetings.

Because I learned artful "experience" design and how this relates to client service during my time with the Houston Ballet development department, my event team and I designed a setup for the client's lunch meetings, held on separate floors of the same building, that created a total EXPERIENCE for these dear people stuck in the office.

White linens on the buffet tables and also covering credenzas to create extra serving space, folded and fanned ivory satin napkins, risers on the food tables covered with satin squares, cutlery standing up in my signature green glass goblets from Spain (as precious as gold to me, my green goblets), silver trays and glass serving bowls (no disposables), a silver tray with real glass pitchers and a silverplate footed ice bucket. The company provides its own china and flatware.

We recently purchased a large stock of linens, footed ice buckets, and other "decorative" catering accessories to add to our cache--because don't we go to our favorite restaurant for the food AND the experience? Since we have all these things, it's little trouble to use them instead of disposables (which we don't use anyway as we're an eco-friendly business).

Now the menu was gourmet (e.g., cream cheese chicken salad, prosciutto and pesto with fresh mozzarella on baguette) and was in fact the same menu we've served them a few times before. But we were also asked to make the setup as nice as possible within their budget and we did.

The result? When our Exec Chef/Owner a day later hand-delivered thank yous to the two people who had recommended us to replace our competitor, extreme satisfaction all around with the food and "thank you because it's the first time the people on the X floor felt special with the way their lunch was handled." And a comment overhead from the bigwigs' meeting as they helped themselves to the food (placed on the company's Royal Doulton china, which they had used for our competitor's food also): "Today we're getting the fancy treatment--that's nice!"

So if you work in an office or host an event and think people don't notice the little details, think again. They do.

Warmly,

Kristina
Kristina Ríos de Lumbreras, Ph.D.
Director of Sales and Operations/Event Manager
Fandango Catering and Events
(713) 522-0077
info@fandango-catering.com
www.fandango-catering.com