Tag corporate team building

Parties That Cook’s Corporate Event Secrets: How to Throw a Successful Cooking Party

0 comments By The Kitchen Whisperer Filed in Entertaining, General, News & Events Tagged with amazing kitchen race, cooking parties, corporate team building, corporate team building activity, corporate team building event, cupcake wars, outdoor events, parties that cook, spring events, summer events April 26th, 2011 @ 3:14 pm

Need help planning your next corporate team building? Follow these helpful tips from Parties That Cook, and your event is sure to be a success!

–Get Competitive: Adding a competition component to a cooking party definitely changes the event’s dynamic. If you think your guests can handle the heat of competition in the kitchen, fire it up! In the end, everyone wins by building teamwork and camaraderie; though rewarding the winning team with a prize is an extra incentive for guests to try their best! Competitions make particularly good corporate team building activities because they also challenge guests to make the winning presentation. Ever seen your company logo recreated as plate garnish?

–Stay Current: Keep current trends in mind as you plan your bash. Are cupcakes the “It” dessert on the menu this year? Throw a cupcake-themed event, like Cupcake Wars, in which guests are armed with a base recipe of their choosing, and teams select their toppings and flavorings from a pantry of secret ingredients. Whether guests play it safe or head into uncharted territory – did anyone say bacon cupcakes? – presentation is critical as the judges decide which team takes the cake!

–Be Accommodating: If guests have dietary restrictions (vegetarians, food allergies, etc.), don’t just banish them to scraps. Offer to have a special menu item available for them, or reserve a portion of a recipe that can be adapted to fit their needs. If there are 5 vegetarians, remember to have at least one of them on the team making the vegetarian option. They need to be represented, too!

–Get Outdoors: Take advantage of the warmer spring weather, and move your party outside. A corporate scavenger hunt is a creative way to incorporate the outdoors into your cooking party, and Parties That Cook’s Amazing Kitchen Race does just that. Part scavenger hunt and part cooking competition, this event will challenge your guests to think on their feet (literally) as they hunt for clues and work together to earn advantages in the kitchen!

–Get Everyone Involved: Do you have an unenthusiastic guest? Put them in charge of a recipe, and they will be more invested in the outcome. If someone doesn’t want to cook, make them a team runner (have them grab ingredients, cooking utensils or drinks for their teammates) or let them design the final plate presentation.

Check back for more fun corporate event ideas soon. In the meantime, let us know if you have any fun tips!

Networking 101: Making Friends at Seattle’s Northwest Event Show

2 comments By The Kitchen Whisperer Filed in General, News & Events Tagged with cooking with cache, corporate team building, corporate team building event, event planning, exhibitors, meeting planners, meeting planning, northwest event show, party planning, seattle October 19th, 2010 @ 1:03 pm

Last Tuesday, Parties That Cook took advantage of an opportunity to meet key players in the event planning industry. We sent our very own Director of Marketing, Crissy, up to Seattle for the Northwest Event Show. Though only our first trip, this meeting and event planners’ show has been around for over a decade! A great resource for event planners, and an even better chance for exhibitors to get exposure, we were excited to go –or at least be well represented!

Crissy’s first challenge: design the 8’ x 8’ Parties That Cook booth in an attention-grabbing yet attractive way. I would say MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! This tall, dark and handsome mannequin not only left the event with a fan base that would make Old Navy’s mannequins jealous, but kept our team company through the six-hour event.

Despite there being over 250 exhibitors present, we ran into a few of the venues we partner with! It was great to see representatives from Efeste Winery and 415 Westlake. John Chen, CEO of Playtime, Inc. was also there. John is our go-to guy for all things geoteaming, and has been a great partner in putting on our new Cooking with Cache Challenge! This new addition to our event types is a friendly cooking competition taken to the extreme –highly recommended for those looking for a unique kitchen adventure.

All in all, the Northwest Event Show was a success! We are so glad to have met new contacts with companies like Microsoft, Bing, Amazon, Boeing, and REI among others. All of us at Parties That Cook look forward to working with or perhaps partnering with our new acquaintances and the great team building companies we met last week.