Reality Is Sinking In

At Yesterdays staff meeting the event finally showed up on the meeting sheets.  This means that we are less then two weeks away.  We have been meeting as teams but this was the first time we met as one large group.  After reviewing the other events that we have over the two weeks it was time to talk about COOK. I read through the production schedule for the next two week:

Made some discussion, made some change, dismissed everyone and then looked to my right to see this....  accompanied by "OH MY GOD IT'S HERE"

Continued working hard all day for the big leadership meeting we had scheduled for 5:30, time to share the plan with the 40+ leaders who are going to help us pull off this thing.

I put together a kick butt PowerPoint with wonderful visual aids and terrific graphics.  Too bad I forgot to load the finished copy on my flash drive and bring it with me.  I ran with the one I had for 1/2 the presentation and went by memory for 20 minutes while Vince tried to find the good copy.  The best we could do was have Dave send us the pdf copy of it that I sent him earlier in the day by the end of the meeting we got the pdf on the screen and reviewed it real quick to see if there was anything I forgot to cover when I was "winging it".  I didn't do half bad.... roll with the obstacles that may arise with a smile...good practice for next week. I tell you ... I'm really mellowing with age; 10 years ago I would have freaked out and been so upset about not having the right PowerPoint. 

The meeting went well.  I told the team  "I have been working my butt off for 10 months on this sucker, it has been consuming my life, I now hand it off to you... it is time that I put this in your hands"  I honestly had to fight back tears.

Today the Sysco semi that we are using for product storage arrived (no we do not have cooler space big enough to hold product for 6500 people). Such an exciting sight that we had to pause to take pictures.

So happy that the warehouse boys got to leave by 3:00, they have a lot of work ahead of them and really can use the rest.  But isn't it our luck........ a truck pulls up delivering the 10,200 pieces of rolled cutlery right at 3:15.  To top it off the lift gate on the truck breaks and the driver wants us to unload it all by hand.  So what to we do....we make it happen!!!  Kitchen and Office staff unload the  truck.  Here you can see 3 event designers, 1 secretary, 1 controller, 1 chef, 1 sous chef and our ever photogenic executive chef.  What a team!!!

Reality is sinking in... This train is leaving the station weather we are ready or not, HERE WE GO!!!

  

Food, Food and more Food

So how much food does it take to feed 6500 guest? Can you say a "S" tone :-)

We have been making our famous Carrot Souffle for a few weeks now.  Yes, we have a famous side dish don't ask...that's another entire blog post. 

When it is all said and done we will have used 1430 pounds of carrots (which equals the average weight of a bison);








357.5 pounds of butter (enough to butter 11,520 bags of popcorn)

715 cups of sugar - Talk about a sugar rush!!

286 cups flour, 4290 eggs (if you stack them one by one on top of each other they would be as tall as the Hancock Center in Chicago),


 



Resulting in 159 hotel pan.

There are 120 pans stacked in the freezer right now so we are 75% done. Almost out of freezer space.

Here is what the rest of our order looks like:

2500 pounds of Beef Short Ribs
7200 Chicken Breast (from the chicken who keeled over after producing 4290 eggs)
960 pounds of Green Beans
1800 pounds of Red Skin Potatoes
9840 dinner rolls
1680 pounds of pasta salad



I also have 10,000 of these little chocolate medallions sitting in my office at the moment

....ummmm 9,999

It takes an army or 448 people ...mostly strangers

Food is in production, equipment is organized and packed, it is time to work on staff.  

We have been talking to people for month about this event but it is really hard to go after a real commitment to far in advance, of course the people on our staff have had this on there schedule for months, but strangers who really have no real ties from to Thomas Caterers are hard to rely on until the week of (and I'm not really confadent we can truely rely on them even now).

So how do you find 448 people to work for you for one day?  We have gone about it 5 different ways:

Thomas Caterers Staff: My wonderful staff is making up the 40+ leaders needed to direct the 400 strangers that we will be relying on pull this thing off.

Leading Caterers of America (Top Gun): We are part of a fantastic group of caterers that get together to share ideas and strategies.  I put out a call for help and we had two companies really come thought for us. Catering By Michaels out of Chicago sent us 6 chefs and Zilli's Hospitality Group out of Milwaukee sent us 4 chefs. They will be working with us all week to prep food and traveling down to Bloomington to help us produce the event.

Head Hunter Program: Our people are great and great people know great people, so we decided to develop a recruitment program amongst our staff.  Each person gets $10 for everyone they sign up.  We had pretty good success with this and had over four dozen people sign up through the program. 

Temp Staffing Company:  We turned to our local temporary staffing agency for the rest.  We have a pretty good relationship with them and they know the kind of people we are looking for. We also know how hard it is to find a lot of good people so it is scary because we have know idea where they are looking. We have had several meetings with them the last couple of month so that they understand the event as a whole and what type of person we are looking for in each position.  Some of the positions are very physical and some need to be pollished.  We are getting about 150 people from them.  We have asked that the principal management of there companies travel with their people and be on sight that night.  Something that isn't always expected but we have found that with this many strangers they listen much better to their real bosses then to us.

Charitable Donations: We contacted 2 of the local High School Band and gave them a fund raising opportunity.    They are supplying us with over 120 people total and in return we are making a donation to there band booster organizations.  They really seem like great people but again they are strangers to us and don't feel the dedication/obligation to this the way we do.  Here is to hoping they show up.

Organizational chart: The best way to lead 448 staff members is to lead 10.  We are asking 40 of our best staff to lead small groups of mostly strangers in specific tasks.  We have buffet leaders leading the  band kids dishing out the food, we have clearing captians leading 5-7 people clear tash from tables, we have trash captians leading 30 boys gathering trash, etc, etc.  

 

T-Sirts and  Wristbands: To help decifer who belongs where we are using t-shirst and wristbands.  The color t-shirt that each person is wearing will tell what their job is.  The colored wristband they are wearing will desginate what section they belong in, just like an army.

Shop Till You Drop......... a lot of dough

July 2, 2013

Equipment

How much stuff does it take to put on a event for 6500 guest?

120 black trash cans on wheels.  We had to run around to 6 different Home Depots to get them all. But they are here and ready to go.


2000 Trash bags - That means that each trash can is scheduled to be emptied 17 times.  Over a 4 hour span that's once every 15 minutes. 


9,375 Sterno which leads me to order 20 fire extinguishers even after the fire marshal told me that I don't have to and that he will have 24 people on site with there own. Yeah right I am not taking ANY chances!! Can you imagine....."oopies" Nope, not gonna happen to me!!


50,000 plastic cups - 12 oz and 9 oz plastic cups

20,000 bottles of bottled water with custom created labels.

342 Serving Utensils - for the buffets, (I mean stations....)

200 gallons of coffee - accompanied by 3000 sugar tubes, 3000 sweetener tubes, 3000 shelf & stable creamer

22,000 pieces of plastic-ware for the food stations

120 Chafers - renting these

100 bus tubs

60 ice scoops

......and the list goes on and on and on

Currently Dee and I are working on the bowls and baskets for the buffets food stations.  We need 36 salad bowls, 36 bread baskets, 36 containers for the cutlery rolls and 36 bowls for the butter.

Thinking strategically we are trying to find items that look similar but are different so that we have a variety of items to use in the future. so for example out of the 36 pasta bowls we are looking for 5 different styles.

It's hard to shop out of catalogs, so it's off to IKEA for Vince and I.  ROAD TRIP, but this time we are heading north and not south.  Not sure if shopping at IKEA for this event while we are building a house is a good idea or not... we'll see :-)

First Guest Count

June 21,

For this event we asked for two guest count deadlines.   The the first is 6 weeks out so that we can get our food vendors started (for some strange reason our Sysco rep doesn't think it's a good idea call 10 days before the event and order 9000 deserts ... what ever ....whimps!!).  The second is 2 weeks out. 

This email came today:

Kelly, as if right now we are at 5423 with 1100 who have not responded yet.  If those all 1100 happen to respond with a guest that will give us a max of 7523.  

My heart accutly sank just a little.  We have been working so hard planning for 9200...this felt like a real kick in the gut.  We all sat there with our jaws to the ground, reworking the plan in our heads.  

Stupid to be disappointed!  A 6000 person event is still huge and if we had been planing for 6000 from the beginning we would have been walking around telling everyone about our enormous event for 6000. But now I have to tell everyone my big event coming up isn't for 9000 anymore it's only for 6000.  Oh the shame!

LOL Really!!  I turned to Rach and said "funny, watch Saturday night at 11:00 we will be laying flat in the parking lot unable to move and we will turn to each other and say "OMG can you imagine if the guest count would have really been 9000?"

It's like winning a million dollars in the lottery and then being disappointed they hand you a check for $800,000 after taxes. 

RIDICULOUS!!  

COOK - Trash, Beer, Marching Bands and an Old Friend

June 6th 2013


On the road again, I just can't wait to get on the road again, I find love is planning events with my friends, oh I can't wait to get on the road again...............

 Today we are off to visit with vendors.  We started the morning in the dumps, no really the first stop was to Hoosier trash where we met with Ron Howard (yes I said Ron Howard, again) about the trash plan.  You may recall an earlier post dedicated all to trash (if you didn't then go read it, it is quite interesting).  He was so proud of all his dumpster and had to show me everything, it was really kind of fun.... a little stinky but fun.

 Our Second stop was at Ivey Tech Blooming campus where we met up with and old friend of ours Tad Delay.  Tad was a chef for us back in the day working with mom.  He now teaches at Ivey Tech and we met with him and the department head to recruit chefs for day of event.

A quick stop for lunch at a Mexican place where everyone was watching soccer and we were off to Best Beers.  Another fun visit.  Love the guys there!!  We really feel comfortable working with them. And we even left with samples :-)  We placed our tentative order: 185 case of Budweiser, 552 cases of Bud Lite, 276 cases of Amstel Lite and 276 case of Heineken. That is a total of 1,289 cases of beer........... 30,936 Bottle of Beer. Reminds me of another song.................can you image, start there on your next road trip.

  Our last stop was to meet with the parent organizations of two local high school marching bands.  We are recruiting help for part of the event from them.  It is a fund raiser for them.... a win win for everyone.  COOK has a long history with marching band (In our past lives Vince and I did as well), and we are so happy to be supporting these organizations.

From here we head down to French Lick to talk with them about 2 events in November for 1000 guest each. But that will be a different blog at a different time :-)  Yep, we are going back to West Baden!

Cook - Time to Call in Reinforcements

May 2013

Ok, I have worked on this thing by myself long enough. The folder is growing from a 1" binder to a 4" binder.  Time to call in reinforcements!!!

I am creating 3 teams: staffing team, logistics team and kitchen team.  It is time to start weekly meetings as a group and getting everyone on board.  I belive the more people that are involved in the planning process the more people are invested in its success and the more people that trully understand what is going on the day of. It is also time to meet will ALL the vendors and get them involved, it is going to take an army to feed an army.

Kitchen team: Rach, Toby, Vince and myself.  With some involvement from the rest of the boys and special visits from Ops Manager Keith.  Focus: food production.  Week of prep (how are we really going to prep all this?  We are looking at 1500 pans of food) and day of production (how do we get the food hot and keep it hot?).

Logistics team: Keith, Dee, Vince and myself. Focus: equipment, site plans, set-up plans, transprotation, water, trucks, etc. (etc= everything that can "happen")

Staffing team: Alex, Kendra, Lisa, Vince and myself.  Focus: finding almost 500 staff, identifying the leaders, uniforms, people management and staff comminication.

GOOOOOOOOO TEAM!!   

BREAK