Meeting professionals seeking to create an event to remember can gain a lot from watching Sunday night's 72nd Annual Golden Globe Award show. Look beyond the red carpet, and even the winners, to take in the grandeur of The Beverly Hilton dining room, where the ceremony has taken place since 1961.
Notice the elaborate table decorations that greet the 1,300 diners. Observe the food and beverage choices for each of the three courses. Look for fresh new food ingredients and beverages - last year, they included a Gusto Mango dessert and the first Golden Globes cocktail.
Watch the unobtrusive waiters skillfully move from course to course, filling the champagne flutes and minding which diners -- up to 30 percent some years -- get a special vegan or gluten-free dinner. And take note of the dessert in particular, always a culinary surprise.
While the Golden Globes is an event crafted for Hollywood's finest, event planners of all types can glean learnings from the ceremony and after-party to prepare unforgettable meetings for their clients. Consider these tips:
1. In planning a menu, keep it simple. It's often tempting to create complex menus when planning an event; however, it's best to let quality ingredients speak for themselves. Attendees will always appreciate a perfectly executed dish that allows the individual elements to shine. Also, be mindful of what to prepare for guests with special food demands, whose numbers have multiplied in recent years. These meals must be tasty and well-presented as well, since it's not unusual anymore for one-in-four diners to request a special meal.
2. Presentation is as important as the menu offerings. The dinner must be presented well, at the correct temperature, and it needs to be artistic at some level. The basic ingredients must be high quality.
3. Ensure that service is impeccable. Service gets equated with the food, so it must be seamless and unobtrusive. Determine your staffing needs and whether you will require one or two waiters for each eight guests or whether you can do with one for 12-to-24 guests. It depends on how many courses will be served, guests expectations and the length of time to serve each course. It also depends on the wait staff's level of experience. A combination of food and service truly makes the key difference in ensuring a special evening.
4. Focus on desserts. They're a great way for a hotel to express its culinary talents. Unlike the meal, you can make desserts well in advance and do amazing things with chocolate and sugar. You can write in chocolate and build beautiful plates -- and they will impress.
5. Make sure to have plenty of product on hand. A big hotel usually has a solid supply of wine, liquor and food ingredients to handle any surprises that might arise, but prepare for such situations, if possible.
Event professionals will succeed if they can create a strong mental picture of what the coming event feels and looks like. Be sure to do a menu tasting with the hotel chefs, and understand what the expectations are for an event and communicate them effectively. Planners must not place their personal preferences over what most attendees will enjoy - they must constantly consider their audience.
Food often serves as the strongest touch-point with attendees throughout an event -- at meals, during coffee breaks, during a break-out sessions, etc. It's also the time when attendees' interactions with one another are richest. People are more relaxed around food, and meaningful conversations and connections are sustained not just for the event attendees but also their social networks. Social sharing of dining experiences is increasingly common as food moves beyond driving connections between attendees to creating connections with their social communities as well.
In short, when guests and attendees leave a hotel and talk or post about a dinner or meeting, most conversations about whether the event was good or bad turns to food, beverage and service. So to make your next event shine, make sure you're mindful of the meals -- it makes all the difference.
Tom Walters is senior vice president of Food and Beverage in the Americas for Hilton Worldwide.