Whether it’s the fabulous food, the competition between contestants, or the celebrity judges, ours is a country obsessed with cooking shows. The good news is that this sort of activity crosses over nicely into an engaging team building event. Thinking about this option for your crew? Amber Stewart, Client & Operations Manager at Chef Jeff Catering reveals what a team-building cooking event entails.
Q. Tell me about Chef Jeff Catering and what you do there?
A. Fourteen years ago, Jeff Riley, also known as Chef Jeff, was cooking at the Nicollet Island Inn when he started doing some catering for his church. This quickly expanded into catering for other churches, schools, and more. Jeff decided to launch Chef Jeff Catering to help others, give people jobs, and offer quality food at an affordable price. Since expanding his career to full-time catering, Chef Jeff has established strong partnerships and relationships with multiple churches and other organizations, evolving the business into full-service catering for everything from weddings to corporate events. As Client & Operations Manager, I work with clients, perform marketing, hire staff, work with vendors, financials, professional development, and more.
Q. Describe what a cooking event looks like with your company.
A. We’ve done cooking events for everything from community ed classes to corporate events. There are two styles of events that are popular. The first style is limited engagement in which Chef Jeff prepares a recipe in front of an audience, bringing people forward to participate, or simply demonstrating while they watch. The second style is full engagement. At this type of event, groups are broken up into teams, as few as two or as many as five. Chef Jeff demonstrates the dish they’ll be preparing and what they’ll need to do. The event is timed, so the groups work as teams to prepare their dish. When the time is up, judges rate their end results and the team gets to enjoy their final product.
Q. Where are these team building events typically held?
A. They’re usually held on site at the customer’s location. We can adapt recipes to the environment we’re in, so if the client doesn’t have an oven, they’ll prepare a dish that maybe requires more chopping or dicing, rather than sautéing or frying.
Q. Are there menu options from which your customers choose?
A. Because we’re a custom caterer, we don’t offer a standard menu. Instead, we work with the customer to determine what dish to prepare. Of course, we can make recommendations, but it’s really important that the customer receive a customized experience, from the food to the timeline to the location.
Q. What kind of client feedback have you received after these kinds of events?
A. Cooking shows have ushered in a kind of food renaissance right now, so these events are becoming increasingly popular. Customers tell us they find the experience really fun. The feedback we receive is that customers want their teams to engage in something different and encourage the emergence of different team dynamics, all while learning some practical skills. And in the end, they get to eat what they make, and who doesn’t like that? It’s a great alternative to typical team building events.
