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.