Food Function Flair

Food costs are going up. Hotel F&B minimums are rising. Attendee expectations are also on the upswing. So how do you add fun and flair to your food and beverage events without breaking the bank?

By Kate Burton

It might be an exaggeration to say that “everything” is negotiable, but not by much. Of course, there always has to be some give and take on the part of the planner, as well as the hotel. “We might not be able to do a Saturday night for a discounted price,” says Linwood Campbell, senior convention services manager of the Westin Charlotte in North Carolina, “but if the planner is willing to change the event to a Sunday or Friday evening, when we’re typically not as busy, we can usually do a lot more.”

By the same token, if you allow a hotel to create the menu, they can often tag team one group’s menu with another’s. “If I already have one group in house that is having a given meal, I can give the second group a value if they opt for the same menu or some of the same items,” explains Ed DiAntonio, CPCE, CMP, director of catering for the Walt Disney World Swan & Dolphin Hotel in Orlando. While the additional food is an obvious cost, DiAntonio says the savings in labor allows leeway for a better price.

Along the same lines, Campbell notes that the hotel won’t discount a published menu item, but “we will create a customized menu that’s comparable for a discounted price. I might not be able to discount x for you, but if I can substitute y instead, I can give that to you at the price you need.”

In fact, a customized menu and talking with the chef directly are two great strategies for keeping costs down while adding interest. “My first challenge is in explaining what I need,” says Sheri Clemmer, associate meeting planner for the Silver Spring, Maryland-based Seventh-day Adventists World Headquarters. She plans meal functions for a group that is primarily lacto-ovo vegetarian (vegetarians who consumer dairy products).

“I often have two meals a day for 10 days,” says says. “Please don’t suggest eggplant parmesan and vegetarian lasagna for all 10 days!” When it comes to budget, she is willing to work with the hotel. “If I have to cut out a dessert option or one of the salads to whittle it down to the price I need, I will.” But there are times when she just flat out states, “This is my budget. What can you do for me?”

That’s the strategy recommended by John Nellesen, CMP, director of event management for the St. Louis Renaissance Grand and Suites Hotel. “The best way to keep costs down is to be honest with us about how much you have to spend. Once we have a budget, the chef can go all out with the money we have to spend. The standard menus are great as a starting point, but we don’t need to stick with them.”

Presentation Counts

Another way to save is by working with the hotel on the decorations that typically accompany a food event. “Find out what items the hotel can give you that aren’t a hard-dollar cost to them,” says Jason Jordan, a St. Louis-based strategic account manager of the meeting and event services management company Experient (formerly Conferon). He explains that a “hard-dollar cost” is anything a hotel has to pay for itself.

“For example, centerpieces that have fresh roses are a hard-dollar cost because the hotel will have to pay for the roses and therefore they will have to charge you-so there’s not much room for negotiating,” he explains.

“On the other hand, they might own something that would work as a centerpiece so there is no cost to them to provide it. Even if they would normally charge an upgrade fee, a planner can negotiate that, knowing there is no actual cost to the hotel.”

Theme decorations often fall into this category, and a simple starting point is to take a look at the group catering menu. Odds are that if they’re touting a Mexican buffet, they’ve already got the decorations in house to go with it. “If you don’t have to pay for decorations,” says Jordan, “that’s more money that can go to the food.”

And don’t be afraid to do it yourself. “Our priority is food, rather than decoration,” says Carol Eby-Good, member services coordinator of Lancaster, Pennsylvania-based Mennonite Economic Development Activities and a meeting planner for the group. “We keep our centerpieces simple.” For a recent meeting with multiple food functions, she bought several pots of chrysanthemums from The Home Depot for use as centerpieces for meal functions.

“They were only two or three dollars a piece and lasted through the whole meeting,” she says. “We varied the look of the room with different linens and the other elements on the table for each meal so with very simple staging, we got different looks.”

Incorporating local flair can add creativity without adding much cost. Clemmer well remembers the fun attendees had with decorations at one dinner in Colorado in 2004. To get a taste of the locale, the international group of about 120 attendees went to a local restaurant for regional fare, including baked beans, fresh cornbread, barbecue-style Portobello mushrooms, and more.

The restaurant was already decorated in an Old West style, with “Wanted” posters on the sides of booths. To make the event more fun, Clemmer’s team put the names of the group’s big players on personalized “Wanted” posters. “It was so much fun and people kept walking around to look at the different posters,” she says. “The people who were on the posters got to keep them at the end.”

Campbell suggests another way to make an event more personal. “We can take a recipe of one of the attendees and recreate it, maybe a signature punch of one of the founding members of the church or a special pie that is everyone’s favorite,” he says. Label it so everyone knows whose recipe it is, and all of a sudden, a simple drink or dessert becomes a memorable part of the event. “Everyone wants a memory,” says Campbell, “so the more personal you can make it, the better.”

Of course, it’s not just the presentation of the room that can make an impact, but the presentation of the food itself. “We’ve been moving away from props and trying to ensure the food is the star,” says Steve Enselein, vice president of catering and convention services for Hyatt Hotels Corporation, based in Chicago.

With the emphasis on fresh foods, the chain is moving away from what Enselein calls “traditional institutional equipment to look more like attendees are guests in someone’s else.” Chafing dishes are replaced with large pots and pans, which keeps the food fresher, while wood benches, ladders and stainless steel tables hold the foods rather than the traditional skirted banquet table.

Sit Down!

When it comes to pricing, a sit-down dinner is almost always going to be less expensive than a buffet-a bonus in that attendees usually perceive a sit-down dinner as more “elegant,” but a negative in that there’s going to be fewer choices. Hyatt has recently come up with a method to deal with this corporate-wide with its Personal Preference menus. Phased in over the past year and soon to be introduced as part of its standard banquet menus, the concept is simple: a sit-down dinner that offers attendees choices.

“The goal is a restaurant-style experience,” says Enselein. “The planner selects an appetizer and a salad from a pre-determined list that is the same for every attendee. They also choose four entrees, typically a beef, chicken, fish, and vegetarian entrée, from which attendees can make their selection at the beginning of the meal.”

The price for this added variety? “Typically, it will be about five percent more than our standard sit-down because there are more labor costs involved from the hotel standpoint,” says Enselein. “But the pricing comes out comparable to a buffet with a similar choice of entrees but a much more elegant feel.”

The meal is topped off with a dessert sampler so attendees can experience bite-sized pieces of several different desserts rather than just one.

Speaking of dessert, Nellesen advises that’s a good place to go for the “wow” factor: “Face it, a person can not like their salad, find their meal just OK, but if you wow them with the dessert, they’ll remember the whole meal as being fantastic.”

Breakfast, too, is another area where it’s often easy to find a middle ground. “We’ll do a standard Continental breakfast,” says DiAntonio, “but add in one hot item along with it, say a coddled egg with spinach and bacon, or one with braised fennel and sage sausages. It costs more than the Continental, but less than a complete meal, so it’s a great compromise.”

Break It Up

Meeting breaks might well be the best place to add some bang for the buck since by their very nature they’re less expensive than full meals. One simple way to get more value is to “take the dessert portion of a package meal price and split that into another event later,” Nellesen suggests. For example, save the dessert portion of a dinner and serve it instead at an afternoon break.

At Copper Mountain Resort in Colorado, adding activities to a break is a great way to add some pizzazz without a lot of extra cost. “Our Energy Break is really popular,” says Kyle Peterson, manager of conferences and group services. “We can pack a mesh bag with foods like granola bars, espresso beans, and an energy drink and then head out to the climbing wall, for example. It gets attendees out of the meeting rooms and into the mountains, plus it gives them a taste of something they might want to do more of in the afternoon. Even if they just get outside for a few minutes, it’s revitalizing.”

Other ways the resort recommends waking up attendees is to bring in a yoga instructor for a few minutes of stretching or, for a smaller group, have a couple of people who can do chair massages. Such activities add little cost, but with the food itself becoming less a center point, they can pack a memorable punch. Just add some power bars and fresh fruit, maybe some freshly baked breads and freshly squeezed juice, and you’ve got a health- and cost-conscious event.

Other theme breaks can also add a lot of fun without adding a lot of dollars. “We’ve been doing a lot of penny-candy breaks,” says Nellesen. “We buy candies in bulk, like Red Hots, Swedish Fish, Tootsie Rolls, and such, and present them in old-style candy jars.”

To add some flair to a fairly standard cookie break, DiAntonio takes a metal flattop, puts the cookies on top of it-and some Sterno stoves underneath it. “Guests are now getting warm cookies that also smell wonderful,” he says. He also says soft-serve ice cream machines are fun for groups. “We set it up to look like a store and then add toppings so attendees can create their own sundaes.”