Tag cooking up success

Parties That Cook Reflects on the Top 12 Accomplishments of 2012

0 comments By The Kitchen Whisperer Filed in Entertaining, News & Events Tagged with , , , , , , , , , January 15th, 2013 @ 3:19 pm

We managed to survive the madness of the holidays, only to find ourselves waist-deep in January events! Just as we did last year, we’re about to dive into Parties That Cook’s Top Accomplishments of 2012.

1.  Broke our Own Records. In 2012, we hosted our largest event to-date (can you even picture 213 guests?!) and later booked our largest event to-date. This January, we’ll be sure to welcome all 275 guest with open arms!

2.  Launched New Events. 2012 brought the almost accidental development of Cooking with Kindness, a corporate event where groups come together in the kitchen of a local family shelter to cook for, serve, and dine alongside its residents.

3.  Became a Certified Women-Owned Business. That’s right. Not only is PTC founder and CEO, Bibby Giginilliat, a woman (surprise!), she also passed the rigorous application process and proved herself as visionary of the company.

4.  Hosted another Successful Women’s Initiative Fundraiser. We are on a roll, folks! Cooking up Success for Women’s Initiative has surely taken off. Raising $17,500 is nothing to be ashamed of!

5.  Celebrated Birthdays and Birth Days. Not only did we host awesome birthday celebrations (per usual), but we also welcomed 2 new little guys to the PTC family! HUGE congratulations to Erin and Rosie!

6.  Grew like Crazy in Multiple Markets. Talk about a growth spurt! When 68% growth (Chicago) isn’t the biggest change you’ve seen, you know you’re doing something right. Hello, 675% growth in Portland!!

7.  Cooked up Romance. We’ve conquered Date Night proposals in 2011, so we thought we’d challenge ourselves with Singles. Who better to partner with, running approx. 30 events in 3 cities, than Match.com?

8.  Won Awards and Made Headlines. We were awarded #63 on the list of Fastest Growing Small Businesses by the San Francisco Business Times and earned a spot on the Inc. 500|5000 List of America’s Fastest Growing Private Companies for the first time! Man, it feels good to be a baller. We’re proud to say we were featured in Crain’s Chicago Business for the first time. See it for yourself here.

9.  Worked on Cohesion within Our Team. A series of workshops with facilitator, Abby, raised our corporate and personal consciousness. Things have never been smoother.

10.  Positioned PTC to Make BIG Moves in 2013. Remember how we moved Carolyn to Portlandia to manage the NW territory? Talk about a good move! We also hired some amazing new office talent, AND managed to let go of bulk. We have officially embraced our new mantra: less is more.

Parties That Cook Fundraiser Recap: Cooking Up Success for Women’s Initiative

0 comments By The Kitchen Whisperer Filed in News & Events Tagged with , , , , May 3rd, 2012 @ 4:14 pm

Wednesday, April 18, Parties That Cook hosted its most successful fundraiser ever! Over 100 tickets were sold to Cooking Up Success for Women’s Initiative, and we were adding folks to the guest list right up until the morning-of. This was our third annual fundraising event benefiting Women’s Initiative, and the community support for this amazing cause was evident.

For those of you who might not know, Women’s Initiative for Self Employment is a Bay Area non-profit that provides high-potential, lower-income women the training, resources and on-going support to start and grow their business. This amazing organization has been in San Francisco for 24 years (longer than someone in our office has been alive)!

Once again, Bibby gave her famously engaging cooking demo, with insightful tips and tricks for the evening’s recipes. Attendees were relaxed and mingling throughout the event, even as they were divided into smaller teams to prepare the menu of international tapas. Guests enjoyed delicious wine graciously provided by Banshee Wines, and there was even a little “marketplace” showcasing the products of five Women’s Initiative graduates.

Near the end of the event, Women’s Initiative graduate, Azalina Eusope, told an inspiring story of her experience with Women’s Initiative and how she launched her successful Malaysian foods company, Azalina’s. We caught tears falling from a few eyes, but promised we wouldn’t name names. Beautiful professional photos from the event (featured in this blog) were taken by Women’s Initiative graduate, Aurora Meneghello, and they can all be found on the Aurora Meneghello Productions Facebook page.

And now, for the statistic everyone’s been waiting for: The event raised the staggering amount of $17,500!! Parties That Cook is as proud as ever to have lent a hand to Women’s Initiative and our community.

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