COOK - Welcome to the Party

November 2012 - waking up at 6:00am is NOT my thing. I mean, come on, I'm a caterer.  We work nights! I avoid 9:00am meetings as much as possible but when a client asks to meet at 9:00 am and the location is an hour and a half away you wake up at 6am. I walked into a meeting with the planner, the client, the location staff and the AV company, all of whom have been working in this project for months. We were just granted permission from the university to caterer this event and this meeting was called to "catch us up".

We walked into the meeting looking good in our new Thomas swag. The look of confidence and professionalism we were displaying was stunning and covered up the fact that we were scared as hell fantastically. A tour of the area produce these facts: the max guest count is 9200, the program is going to be in the basketball area, the food and beverage is going to be next door in the field house (fire code is 6000 guest), they know they can't do a sit down but don't want a "buffet" , they want beer/wine and speciality drink. I was handed a map of the site plan in which a 120x180 tent located at one end of the field house in the parking lot was designated for catering. As we walked all around the property I was denied any more possible space - "no the entertainers busses need to park here, no the generators need to be here, no the HVAC needs to be here...."

Hummm.....after the tour we joined back up with the client who asked "so what do you think?".  I turned to her and smiled "This is fantastic!  Can I take all this info back to my team, come up with a plan and present it to you if a couple weeks?" So we set up a meeting for after Christmas, Vince and I got back in the car and started the hour and a half drive back to Indy.  I don't really remember that dirve back, I think they call it SHOCK!