Indiana University Alumni Celebration Weekend
Event Date: February 29, 2020
Event Audience: LGBTQ+ alumni and students
Event Purpose: to conclude Celebration Weekend 2020 and raise money for emergency assistance scholarships. These are primarily used when families, churches, or financial sponsors stop supporting a student upon learning of their LGBTQ+ affiliation. The IU Alumni Association coordinator, Connor, wanted our food, beverage, and bar catering service to encourage greater donations from guests.
My Thoughts: As a sales coordinator, I am responsible for working with clients to place an OWC order and refine the logistics of our service with kitchen and operational staff. In its true form, this job means I need to navigate the intersection of event phases and food service as well as the ways in which catering can enhance or spoil an event's success and guests' reception of it.
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In designing the buffets, I was inspired by the venue's simple, contemporary interior and chose to include colorful, bite-sized foods to "pop" from the rest of this space. The black triangular serving stand and "parallel bars" display are two items that I commissioned for another event (Eskenazi Re-Opening below). I use them often to play with height and style on buffets. Between Connor's work, our catering, and guests' generosity, the Alumni Association raised over $11,000.
Indiana University Auditorium Piano Dedication
Event Date: January 17, 2020​
Event Audience: donors, supporters, and auditorium personnel.
Event Purpose: to commemorate the purchase of a new Steinway & Sons piano to be used in theatre classes and productions. Guests mingled and listened to two inaugural piano performances. Our team provided drinks, specialty cocktails, appetizers, and desserts.
My Contributions: While I was not the primary coordinator for this event, I was asked to assist in designing the buffets and lead our crew during the dedication. In meetings, I inspired the hanging music note cookie display and its sheet music backdrop, suggested a chafer-less buffet style, and initiated using a warming table to keep all hot foods at a safe serving temperature while maintaining the sleek aesthetic that the coordinator wanted.
Eskenazi Museum of Art Celebration Dinner
Event Date: October 25, 2019
Event Audience: an intimate number of high-profile donors, including the president of the university, provost, and eponymous Eskenazi family.
Event Purpose: to honor the support of those who helped majorly fund the Eskenazi Museum of Art's $30 million, nearly three-year renovation.
My Contributions: The phases of this event centered primarily on our food. The only other activities were a few dinner speeches and a gallery tour. Being the sole catering coordinator, I was responsible for the menu selections, table linens, dinner ware, staffing, and minute details. I'm typically responsible for these elements but felt added pressure considering the audience we'd be serving. With any of my VIP or large-scale events, I also choose to be hands-on for the majority of the event, setting tables, plating food, and checking on guests alongside our serving staff.
This event either set a record for our business or landed in the top 3 as the most expensive per-guest price for anything we have catered.
Eskenazi
Museum of Art
Grand
Re-Opening
This is the largest, most high profile event I have coordinated to date. Strap in for a lengthy description, OR skip down and watch the video.
In early 2019 I received a request from a woman named Sarah at University Events. She needed OWC to cater the private re-opening ceremony for the university's Eskenazi Museum of Art. Sarah wanted service more grand than our traditional formal buffets. She wanted guests to experience something they never had before, to be immersed in the museum's new themes and features even as they ate, to be delighted and awed by the catering, not just satisfied. The scale and importance of this event for IU were obvious. This was an unequalled opportunity for my career and a compelling project, so I accepted despite the brevity of my time as an OWC coordinator.
I enlisted two more experienced sales coordinators (Jen and Laura) to collaborate with. To be clear, however, I was the head planner, sole communicator with the client, and final decision-maker regarding all catering for the event, with the client's approval.
Jen, Laura, and I wanted to design the catering in a different way than we often did at OWC by relying on new tools and serving methods, playing with nontraditional food display pieces, and imitating the museum's architecture, gallery, and event elements to create a blended style between our food and the surrounding celebration. My planning began by simply choosing popular foods to serve but kept expanding to consider what we could accomplish with some extra flair. What items can we incorporate that will enhance and honor the museum's features? What inexpensive resources can we find? How can we use the other planned event elements to increase the drama of our displays? How can we go all out and accomplish this with our traditionally small team?
In the final vision and execution, we created four diverse food stations (as you'll see below) that each used serving methods other than chafers, incorporated the event's color palette, and exemplified a distinct inspiration.
The Eskenazi Museum of Art Re-Opening Reception was, and still is, the most elaborate, meticulous, and daunting event I've ever planned. My role in it has become one of the greatest successes of my developing career. The above photos exemplify various segments in my planning process for this--from visual inspiration to supply acquisition to buffet design and day-of setup.
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Below is further information (and all the exciting, pretty details). For the full but quick scoop, watch the video!
Event Date: November 6, 2019
Event Audience: 250 "friends of the museum"--renovation donors, IU faculty, and other select museum supporters.
Event Purpose: to thank donors and supporters with a private, elegant night at the museum and allow them to tour the updated facility, exhibits, and classrooms.
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Catering Goals: to elevate OWC's traditional buffet presentation and match the museum's thematic surroundings while serving bite-sized, filling appetizers at chafer-less stations.
Hanging Charcuterie Station
Inspiration: the sleek, dark ironwork found throughout the building as well as its angular architecture. There are no 90 degree angles anywhere in the museum unless structurally necessary--not even for the steps! In my planning, I referred to this display as the "Hanging Charcuterie Station" because I intended to have a large metal food stand that appetizers were hanging from. This piece was an integral part of my vision and took many weeks to design, research, and commission. In the end, the welder wasn't able to finish the piece in time. To replace it last minute, I found the angular black shelf and improvised!
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Foods: charcuterie, cheeses, crackers, roasted vegetable antipasto, fig tartlets, and brie pinwheels.
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Notable Features (left to right on station): triangular shelf with blue napkins and real river rocks below the food; black metal display pieces used to create varying heights; wooden artist's palettes food-safe sealed and plated with roasted vegetables to resemble colorful paint; artist's easel and sketch pad menu.
Asian Fusion Station
Inspiration: When I initially chose the menu items Laura noticed there were multiple Asian foods. We decided to group these together at one station and hoped there would be an Asian gallery in the museum to coordinate them with. In a stroke of event-designing luck (realized well before the event, obviously), the Asian & Islamic Art gallery was located on the second level.
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Foods: pork and rice meatballs with soy glaze, vegetarian egg rolls, coconut tofu skewers, and beef bulgogi with kimchi.
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Notable Features (left to right on station): black wicker basket for menu display; warming table (to keep hot food temp-safe without using a chafer) decorated with black linen, orange napkins, and river rocks; small takeout boxes to display egg rolls; real bamboo stalk backdrop; wok with hidden chafer fuel underneath to heat pork meatballs.
Limestone Station
Inspiration: Even though the museum is made of concrete, not limestone like many of IU's other buildings, Indiana has a rich history with the resource. A neighboring town, Bedford, is considered the "Limestone Capitol of the World," so not only is it important to our local area but it's easy to come by. I loved the idea of displaying food on limestone slabs (with food-safe containers/barriers) but also wanted to counteract the heavy stone. To do this, I filled glass vases with greenery and lights and used them as stands for the limestone pieces.
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Foods: baked brie, wild mushroom tartlets, baba ganoush and tapenade with pita points, Caribbean crab salad with fried plantains, mini turkey pot pies, and squash and bacon parcels.
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Notable Features (from left to right on station): limestone menu holders; glass vase stands with greenery and lights; limestone slab serving pieces; hanging triangular pita points; grey and green color incorporation.
Dessert & Coffee Station
Inspiration: bright colors, famous artworks, and fun! Dessert is always fun. This station mainly came together from a few whimsical ideas. "What if we use those paper lanterns we've got in storage?" "Yes! And glowsticks!" "And what if our desserts imitated real art?" Brainstorming like this coupled with my mission to "somehow hang food from something," turned this station into what you see here. My team knew that the IU Events staff were under-lighting each cocktail table in this room but the seamless color coordination between our display and their setup was better than we'd planned. This area became the last stop on the grazing station train, where guests could stay warm under the heated tent, enjoy a late night pick-me-up, and feel whimsical for a moment.
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Foods: berry panna cotta, shortbread cookies, petit fours, sugar cookies, coffee and tea bar with syrups and toppings.
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Notable Features (from left to right on station): black iron "parallel bars" display with hanging buckets, each holding desserts; petit fours inspired by Mondrian's colorful, blocky art; shortbreads inspired by Kandinsky's Color Study; "stained glass" interior sugar cookies; angular, layered panna cotta; white paper lanterns with glowsticks inside.